GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 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 XT		6390 points
GeForce GTX 965M		5650 points
	Difference: 740 (13%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (208%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 965M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be quite a bit (about 47%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 965M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28384 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be a bit (about 2%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 608 (2%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

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