GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 960M		4350 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 880 (25%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTX 960M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (175%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (more or less 93%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40640 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (approximately 61%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 960M, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10624 (61%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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