GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7790, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 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 870M		4770 points
Radeon HD 7790		4330 points
	Difference: 440 (10%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be much (approximately 88%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49392 (88%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be quite a bit (approximately 41%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7790, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.