GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1050 MHz on this specific card. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 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

GeForce GTX 960M		4350 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 1480 (52%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 is 110% quicker than the GeForce GTX 960M in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (110%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a little bit (approximately 15%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (approximately 64%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 960M, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11264 (64%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of 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.