GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 SPUs, 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

Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
GeForce GTX 850M		3340 points
	Difference: 3050 (91%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (363%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be 500% quicker than the GeForce GTX 850M overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a lot (about 153%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53760 (153%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15584 (111%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.