GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
	Difference: 1460 (31%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (60%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be quite a bit (about 32%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25392 (32%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9416 (42%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in 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, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.