GeForce GTX 870M vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Geforce GTX 680, which comes with a clock frequency of 1006 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1502 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 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 680		7650 points
GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
	Difference: 2880 (60%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96256 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be quite a bit (about 22%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 870M. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23376 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9608 (43%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen 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 number of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.