GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 1470 (51%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 106 Watts (236%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (110%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be much (about 52%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26112 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (more or less 126%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16048 (126%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.