GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 285, which comes with a core clock speed of 918 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 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

Radeon R9 285		8500 points
GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
	Difference: 3730 (78%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 285 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (83%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is a bit (more or less 3%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 285. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2576 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 is a lot (more or less 30%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 870M, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6792 (30%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.