GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 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 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 2050 (47%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (311%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a small bit (more or less 16%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12288 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much (about 132%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16848 (132%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.