GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which features a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 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 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTX 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 3885 (90%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 860M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 200000 (313%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be much (about 55%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41888 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (about 132%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.