GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which features GPU clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7850 will be 37% quicker than the GeForce GTX 960 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be a lot (more or less 31%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.