NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 SUPER Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 SUPER represent two vastly different eras of GPU design, separated by more than a decade of architectural evolution. The GTX 860M is a Kepler-based mobile part from the GeForce 800M generation, built on a 28 nm TSMC process with 3,540 million transistors on a 294 mm² die. In contrast, the RTX 5070 SUPER is a Blackwell 2.0 desktop card from the GeForce 50-series, fabricated on a 5 nm TSMC process with 31,100 million transistors packed into a smaller 263 mm² die. The core specifications tell a story of massive scaling: the RTX 5070 SUPER offers 6,400 shading units versus 1,152, 200 texture mapping units versus 96, and 80 ROPs versus 16. Clock speeds have more than doubled, with the newer card boosting to 2512 MHz from the GTX 860M’s 915 MHz. Memory configurations are equally divergent, with 18 GB of GDDR7 on a 192-bit bus delivering 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth, compared to 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus at 80.00 GB/s. The benchmark data, however, presents a curious picture: the GTX 860M has an average benchmark score of 2,967 across ten tests, while the RTX 5070 SUPER shows a single 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2,690. These numbers must be interpreted carefully, as the test suites are not directly comparable.

FAQ

Q: How does the average benchmark score of the GTX 860M compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The GTX 860M’s average benchmark score of 2,967 places it 0.5% above the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti (2,953), 0.5% below the NVIDIA GeForce 820A (2,983), and 1.5% ahead of the NVIDIA Quadro P600 (2,923). It also leads the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB (2,913) by 1.9% in this aggregate metric.

Q: What is the RTX 5070 SUPER’s percentile ranking, and what does that indicate?

A: The RTX 5070 SUPER sits at the 18th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 2,690. This places it within 1.0% of the NVIDIA Quadro K1100M (2,664), 1.1% of both the NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 (2,662) and Intel Arc Pro B50 (2,660), and 1.7% above the NVIDIA GeForce GT 440 (2,645).

Q: Which GPU has higher memory bandwidth, and by how much?

A: The RTX 5070 SUPER offers 672.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is 8.4 times higher than the GTX 860M’s 80.00 GB/s. This is driven by the newer card’s 192-bit GDDR7 interface running at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective), versus the older card’s 128-bit GDDR5 at 1250 MHz (5 Gbps effective).

Q: What are the DirectX API support levels for each GPU?

A: The GTX 860M supports DirectX 12 (11_0), while the RTX 5070 SUPER supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2). This means the newer card can leverage advanced DirectX 12 Ultimate features that the Kepler-based card cannot.

Q: How do the transistor densities compare between the two architectures?

A: The RTX 5070 SUPER’s Blackwell 2.0 architecture achieves a transistor density of 118.3 million transistors per square millimeter, nearly ten times higher than the GTX 860M’s Kepler density of 12.0 million per square millimeter. This is despite the newer chip being physically smaller at 263 mm² versus 294 mm².

Q: What is the production status of each GPU?

A: The GTX 860M is marked as end-of-life, having been released in March 2014 with the GeForce 900M as its successor. The RTX 5070 SUPER is listed as active production, with a release date of December 2025.

Where Each One Wins

The GTX 860M demonstrates its strengths in legacy and compute-oriented workloads based on the available benchmark data. Its highest score comes from Geekbench OpenCL at 10,461, followed by Geekbench Vulkan at 9,648 and Geekbench Metal at 4,900. In DirectX 9 workloads, it scores 55 on Passmark, and it reaches 23 on DirectX 11 and 15 on DirectX 10. The card also shows reasonable 2D performance with a Passmark G2D score of 226, and its overall Passmark G3D score of 3,081 contributes significantly to its average. The GTX 860M’s compute capability is reflected in a Passmark GPU Compute score of 1,251, suggesting it handles general-purpose tasks reasonably well for its era.

The RTX 5070 SUPER’s only recorded benchmark is 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, where it scores 2,690. This test is a modern, DirectX 12-based workload that stresses contemporary features like ray tracing and mesh shaders, which the GTX 860M cannot run at all given its DirectX 12 (11_0) support. The newer card’s 50 RT cores and 200 tensor cores provide hardware acceleration for ray tracing and AI workloads, capabilities entirely absent from the Kepler architecture. With 18 GB of GDDR7 memory and 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth, the RTX 5070 SUPER is positioned for high-resolution texture streaming and large dataset handling. The GTX 860M’s 2 GB of GDDR5 and 80.00 GB/s bandwidth would bottleneck such workloads immediately. In practical terms, the RTX 5070 SUPER wins decisively in any modern gaming or compute scenario that leverages DirectX 12 Ultimate features, while the GTX 860M’s benchmark profile suggests it remains functional in older API environments and OpenCL compute tasks.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two GPUs is generational. The GTX 860M uses the GK104 chip based on Kepler, NVIDIA’s architecture from the GeForce 800M generation. It is built on a 28 nm TSMC process, contains 3,540 million transistors on a 294 mm² die, and achieves a transistor density of 12.0 million per square millimeter. Kepler lacks dedicated ray tracing or tensor cores, relying entirely on its 1,152 shading units for all processing. The memory subsystem uses GDDR5 with a 128-bit bus, and the card supports DirectX 12 (11_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.175. The pixel rate is 21.96 GPixel/s and texture rate is 87.84 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance rated at 2.108 TFLOPS.

The RTX 5070 SUPER is built on the GB205 chip using Blackwell 2.0 architecture, fabricated on a 5 nm TSMC process. It packs 31,100 million transistors into a 263 mm² die, yielding a density of 118.3 million transistors per square millimeter. Blackwell 2.0 introduces 50 dedicated RT cores and 200 tensor cores alongside 6,400 shading units, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing and tensor operations. The memory interface is GDDR7 on a 192-bit bus, and the API support extends to DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4. The pixel rate jumps to 201.0 GPixel/s and texture rate to 502.4 GTexel/s, with FP32 and FP16 both rated at 32.15 TFLOPS. The FP16 capability is notable because the GTX 860M has no listed FP16 performance. The RTX 5070 SUPER also supports PCIe 5.0 x16, while the GTX 860M is limited to PCIe 3.0 x16.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ across nearly every measurable specification. The GTX 860M has a base clock of 797 MHz and boost clock of 915 MHz, while the RTX 5070 SUPER operates at 2325 MHz base and 2512 MHz boost. Memory capacity differs by a factor of nine: 2 GB versus 18 GB. The memory type transitions from GDDR5 to GDDR7, with effective speeds of 5 Gbps and 28 Gbps respectively. Bus width expands from 128-bit to 192-bit, and bandwidth increases from 80.00 GB/s to 672.0 GB/s. Shading units scale from 1,152 to 6,400, TMUs from 96 to 200, and ROPs from 16 to 80. The RTX 5070 SUPER adds 50 RT cores and 200 tensor cores, features absent from the GTX 860M. Power consumption rises from 75 W to 275 W, with the older card using no power connectors and the newer requiring a single 16-pin connector. Physical dimensions differ as well: the RTX 5070 SUPER is a dual-slot card measuring 245 mm by 115 mm by 40 mm, while the GTX 860M is an IGP form factor with portable-device-dependent display outputs. The bus interface advances from PCIe 3.0 x16 to PCIe 5.0 x16, and display outputs upgrade to 1x HDMI 2.1b and 3x DisplayPort 2.1b on the newer model.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Direct head-to-head benchmark comparisons are not available in the data, as the two GPUs have no overlapping test results. The GTX 860M’s benchmark suite consists of Geekbench Metal (4,900), Geekbench OpenCL (10,461), Geekbench Vulkan (9,648), and multiple Passmark tests across DirectX 9 (55), 10 (15), 11 (23), 12 (13), G2D (226), G3D (3,081), and GPU Compute (1,251). The RTX 5070 SUPER’s only recorded score is 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 at 2,690. This single data point cannot be directly compared to any of the GTX 860M’s results because the workloads measure different capabilities. The 3DMark Steel Nomad test is a modern DirectX 12 benchmark that stresses features like ray tracing and asynchronous compute, which the GTX 860M cannot execute due to its DirectX 12 (11_0) support and lack of RT cores. Conversely, the GTX 860M’s Passmark and Geekbench scores reflect legacy APIs and compute patterns that the RTX 5070 SUPER’s architecture may handle differently, but no equivalent tests are recorded for the newer card.

The nearest rival data for each GPU provides some indirect context. The GTX 860M’s average score of 2,967 is within 1.9% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB (2,913), suggesting that in the aggregate of its specific benchmark set, it performs comparably to a much newer card. However, this is an artifact of differing test suites, not a statement of real-world equivalence. The RTX 5070 SUPER’s nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Quadro K1100M (2,664, 1.0% lower), NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 (2,662, 1.1% lower), Intel Arc Pro B50 (2,660, 1.1% lower), and NVIDIA GeForce GT 440 (2,645, 1.7% lower). The RTX 5070 SUPER leads all of these by a narrow margin in its single benchmark, but the result is heavily dependent on the specific workload. The data shows that the RTX 5070 SUPER’s 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 2,690 places it at the 18th percentile of all GPUs, while the GTX 860M’s broader benchmark set yields a 19th percentile ranking. These percentile figures are nearly identical, despite the massive architectural and specification advantages of the newer card, underscoring that benchmark methodology and test selection dramatically influence aggregate rankings. The only clear conclusion from the data is that the GTX 860M has a more extensive and varied benchmark profile, while the RTX 5070 SUPER’s single modern DirectX 12 score cannot be extrapolated to other workloads without additional testing.