GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which has GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, 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 980M		9476 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 3246 (52%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 17 (11%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (75%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be a lot (approximately 25%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19648 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34432 (108%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

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