GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which features core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 3885 (90%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7970 should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 860M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 200000 (313%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (about 55%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41888 (55%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.