GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTX 850M		3340 points
	Difference: 4885 (146%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 210 Watts (525%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 725% quicker than the GeForce GTX 850M overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 232000 (725%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (approximately 238%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83360 (238%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.