GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
GeForce GTX 850M		3340 points
	Difference: 130 (4%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 210 Watts (525%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 will be 450% faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (450%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 141%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49440 (141%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (more or less 101%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 850M, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14144 (101%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.