GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 1397 (22%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 18 (12%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (45%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a little bit (approximately 11%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7872 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is superior to the Radeon HD 7870, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4064 (13%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.