GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features core clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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 950M		3330 points
	Difference: 3060 (92%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (236%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be quite a bit (about 143%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52240 (143%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is much (about 102%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 950M, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14976 (102%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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