GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 TAUs, 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

GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 1530 (47%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be quite a bit (about 50%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34992 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is superior to the GeForce GTX 870M, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3016 (13%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one 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 per second.

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