GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which has GPU 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 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 980M		9476 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 3246 (52%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 17 (11%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (75%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 is 20% quicker than the GeForce GTX 980M overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be a lot (about 25%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19648 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be a lot (more or less 108%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7870, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34432 (108%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.