GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 1900 (66%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (40%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be quite a bit (about 109%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54992 (109%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6216 (28%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated 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 applied in a second.

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