GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
GeForce GTX 950M		3330 points
	Difference: 2900 (87%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (218%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 950M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (380%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (more or less 119%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 950M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43440 (119%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (approximately 119%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 950M, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17376 (119%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.