GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7850, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 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 980M		9476 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 4276 (82%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7850		171 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 16 (10%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 980M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (about 81%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44608 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be much (approximately 141%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7850, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 38912 (141%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.