GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1120 SPUs, 56 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

GeForce GTX 980M		9476 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 6606 (230%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 51 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 980M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (approximately 98%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49248 (98%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37632 (131%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.