GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 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

GeForce GTX 970M		7520 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 1290 (21%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a little bit (approximately 8%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6080 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is superior to the Radeon HD 7870, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12352 (39%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.