GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 2427 (47%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7850		171 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 17 (11%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (18%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7850 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (37%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be quite a bit (more or less 31%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17088 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is a lot (approximately 31%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7850, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8544 (31%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.