GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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 650		2263 points
	Difference: 4127 (182%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 121 Watts (189%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 650 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (140%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is quite a bit (about 162%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54944 (162%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is superior to the GeForce GTX 650, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12672 (75%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 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 max fill rate.