GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

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 will be 175% faster than the GeForce GTX 860M overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be just a bit (about 10%) better at anisotropic 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 will be quite a bit (about 121%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 860M, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.