GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 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

GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
Radeon R7 250X		2860 points
	Difference: 1910 (67%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 870M should be 33% quicker than the Radeon R7 250X in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be quite a bit (more or less 163%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65392 (163%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be a lot (approximately 41%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250X, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6584 (41%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.