GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which has a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (approximately 55%) better at 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 using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, by far. (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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.