GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs 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 965M		5650 points
	Difference: 740 (13%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (208%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT is 200% quicker than the GeForce GTX 965M in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be quite a bit (about 47%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 965M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28384 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 965M is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 608 (2%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant 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.