GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which has GPU clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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

GeForce GTX 860M		4340 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 870 (25%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be 175% quicker than the GeForce GTX 860M overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (175%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a little bit (more or less 10%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7968 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (approximately 121%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15408 (121%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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