Graphics card comparison
GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT
Nvidia
GeForce GTX 960
2048 Mb GDDR5
Released 22 Jan 2015
DESKTOP
VS
AMD
Radeon HD 7870 XT
2048 Mb GDDR5
Released 19 Nov 2012
DESKTOP
Summary
Synthetic performance index
- GeForce GTX 960120%
- Radeon HD 7870 XT100%
Relative performance
Gaming performance index
- GeForce GTX 960100%
- Radeon HD 7870 XT105%
Relative performance
Reasons to consider the GeForce GTX 960
- 65 watts lower power draw. This might be a strong point if your current power supply is not enough to handle the Radeon HD 7870 XT .
- This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support.
- Supports PhysX
- Supports G-Sync
- Supports ShadowPlay (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
- Based on an outdated architecture (Nvidia Maxwell), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications
Reasons to consider the Radeon HD 7870 XT
- 5% higher gaming performance.
- Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
- Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
- Supports Mantle
- Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications
Our verdict
HWSpot recommends the Radeon HD 7870 XT
The Radeon HD 7870 XT is the better performing card based on the game benchmark suite used (1 combinations of games and resolutions).
Specifications
Core configuration
| GeForce GTX 960 | Radeon HD 7870 XT |
|---|
| GPU Name | GM206 (GM206-300-A1) | Tahiti (Tahiti LE) |
| Fab Process | 28 nm | 28 nm |
| Die Size | 228 mm² | 352 mm² |
| Transistors | 2,940 million | 4,313 million |
| Shaders | 1024 | 1536 |
| Compute Units | 8 | 24 |
| Core clock | 1127 MHz | 925 MHz |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 |
| TMUs | 64 | 96 |
Memory configuration
| GeForce GTX 960 | Radeon HD 7870 XT |
|---|
| Memory Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| Bus Width | 128 bit | 256 bit |
| Memory Speed | 1753 MHz
7012 MHz effective | 1500 MHz
6000 MHz effective |
| Memory Size | 2048 Mb | 2048 Mb |
Additional details
| GeForce GTX 960 | Radeon HD 7870 XT |
|---|
| TDP | 120 watts | 185 watts |
| Release Date | 22 Jan 2015 | 19 Nov 2012 |
Raw performance comparison
Pixel Rate
- GeForce GTX 96036.10 GP/s
- Radeon HD 7870 XT29.60 GP/s
GigaPixels - higher is better
Texel Rate
- GeForce GTX 96072.10 GT/s
- Radeon HD 7870 XT88.80 GT/s
GigaTexels - higher is better
Memory bandwidth
- GeForce GTX 960112.20 GB/s
- Radeon HD 7870 XT192.00 GB/s
GB/s - higher is better
Single precision performance
- GeForce GTX 9602308.10 GFLOPs
- Radeon HD 7870 XT2842.00 GFLOPs
GFLOPs - higher is better
Synthetic benchmarks
3DMark 11
- GeForce GTX 96010380
- Radeon HD 7870 XT8590
Points (higher is better)
Game benchmarks
Hitman Absolution
DX11, High Quality, 2x MSAA, 16x AF
- GeForce GTX 96034
- Radeon HD 7870 XT36
FPS (higher is better)