GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs 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 970M		7520 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 1130 (18%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (147%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT is 100% faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a small bit (more or less 20%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14880 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is much (about 50%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14752 (50%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.