GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7850, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs 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 7850		5200 points
GeForce GTX 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 860 (20%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (189%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7850 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 860M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be quite a bit (approximately 39%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21472 (39%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14768 (116%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.