GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 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

Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
	Difference: 1620 (34%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is a small bit (more or less 19%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16592 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7016 (31%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.