GeForce GTX 860M 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 clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units 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 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 2050 (47%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (311%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a little bit (more or less 16%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12288 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is quite a bit (more or less 132%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16848 (132%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.