NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Vs AMD Radeon HD 7870 - Technical City

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking	394	462
Place by popularity	57	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	8.12	2.56
Power efficiency	9.39	4.80
Architecture	Maxwell 2.0 (2014−2019)	GCN 1.0 (2012−2020)
GPU code name	GM206	Pitcairn
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Release date	22 January 2015 (10 years ago)	5 March 2012 (13 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$199	$349

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

The higher the ratio, the better. We use the manufacturer's recommended prices.

GTX 960 has 217% better value for money than HD 7870.

Performance to price scatter graph

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	1024	1280
Core clock speed	1127 MHz	1000 MHz
Boost clock speed	1178 MHz	no data
Number of transistors	2,940 million	2,800 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	120 Watt	175 Watt
Texture fill rate	75.39	80.00
Floating-point processing power	2.413 TFLOPS	2.56 TFLOPS
ROPs	32	32
TMUs	64	80
L1 Cache	384 KB	320 KB
L2 Cache	1024 KB	512 KB

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Bus support	PCI Express 3.0	no data
Interface	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Length	241 mm	241 mm
Height	4.376" (11.1 cm)	no data
Width	2-slot	2-slot
Recommended system power (PSU)	400 Watt	no data
Supplementary power connectors	1x 6-pin	2x 6-pin
SLI options	+	-

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount	4 GB	2 GB
Memory bus width	128 Bit	256 Bit
Memory clock speed	7.0 GB/s	1200 MHz
Memory bandwidth	112 GB/s	153.6 GB/s
Shared memory	-	-

Connectivity and outputs

This section shows the types and number of video connectors on each GPU. The data applies specifically to desktop reference models (for example, NVIDIA’s Founders Edition). OEM partners often modify both the number and types of ports. On notebook GPUs, video‐output options are determined by the laptop’s design rather than the graphics chip itself.

Display Connectors	Dual Link DVI-I, HDMI 2.0, 3x DisplayPort 1.2	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Multi monitor support	4 displays	no data
Eyefinity	-	+
HDMI	+	+
HDCP	+	-
Maximum VGA resolution	2048x1536	no data
G-SYNC support	+	-
Audio input for HDMI	Internal	no data

Supported technologies

Supported technological solutions. This information will prove useful if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

GameStream	+	-
GeForce ShadowPlay	+	-
GPU Boost	2.0	no data
GameWorks	+	-

API and SDK support

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	12 (12_1)	12 (11_1)
Shader Model	6.4	5.1
OpenGL	4.4	4.6
OpenCL	1.2	1.2
Vulkan	+	1.2.131
CUDA	+	-