NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M vs NVIDIA TITAN V CEO Edition Comparison

The database pairing of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M against the NVIDIA TITAN V CEO Edition is an unusual one, and the recorded data rewards careful reading before any conclusion is drawn. On raw specifications, the TITAN V CEO Edition dwarfs the mobile GTX 870M: it fields 5120 shading units against 1344, 14.90 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput against 2.599 TFLOPS, and 32 GB of HBM2 memory against 3 GB of GDDR5. Yet the database's average benchmark scores tell a subtler story, one shaped by the fact that the two cards were measured on entirely different test suites. What follows is a breakdown of what the numbers actually show, where each product sits against its own recorded rivals, and what the specification gulf implies for anyone comparing them today. Both products are end-of-life, and neither carries a recorded launch MSRP in this database.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score in the database?

A: The GTX 870M, narrowly. Its average benchmark score is 9959, while the TITAN V CEO Edition records 9037. That ordering, however, comes from different test suites: the 870M's average is built from Geekbench Metal (7288) and Geekbench OpenCL (12630) results, while the CEO Edition's average draws from PassMark G2D (1086) and G3D (16988) results. The scores are not directly comparable head-to-head.

Q: Where does each GPU sit relative to all GPUs in the database?

A: Both land close to the middle of the pack. The GTX 870M sits at the 48th percentile, the TITAN V CEO Edition at the 45th. That near-parity in percentile standing is a useful caution: neither is an outlier in the database's aggregate ranking.

Q: What are the headline specification differences?

A: The TITAN V CEO Edition has roughly 3.8 times the shading units (5120 versus 1344), roughly 5.7 times the FP32 throughput (14.90 TFLOPS versus 2.599 TFLOPS), and more than ten times the memory (32 GB HBM2 versus 3 GB GDDR5). Its memory bandwidth of 868.4 GB/s is roughly seven times the 870M's 120.0 GB/s.

Q: Which rivals does the database record as closest to each GPU?

A: The GTX 870M's nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon Pro 5300M (average score 10013, 0.5 percent ahead), the NVIDIA Quadro K5100M (10043, 0.8 percent ahead), the AMD Radeon R9 M375 (10070, 1.1 percent ahead), and the NVIDIA Quadro 6000 (9846, 1.1 percent behind). The TITAN V CEO Edition's nearest rivals are the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (9022, 0.2 percent behind), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 (9058, 0.2 percent ahead), the AMD Radeon 550X (8918, 1.3 percent behind), and the AMD Radeon 890M (9210, 1.9 percent ahead).

Q: Do either of these GPUs have ray tracing or tensor hardware?

A: The TITAN V CEO Edition has 640 tensor cores, a signature Volta feature. The GTX 870M has none. Neither GPU has dedicated RT cores; that hardware arrived in later generations.

Q: Are these products still in production?

A: No. Both are flagged as end-of-life in the database. The GTX 870M was released on 2014-03-11, and the TITAN V CEO Edition on 2018-06-20.

The Verdict

Anyone choosing strictly from the recorded data should treat this as a comparison between two products built for different jobs, and the numbers make the split unambiguous on paper even where the benchmark averages blur it.

The TITAN V CEO Edition is the clear pick for any workload that scales with raw compute, memory capacity, or bandwidth. Its 14.90 TFLOPS of FP32, its 29.80 TFLOPS of FP16 at a 2:1 ratio, its 640 tensor cores, and its 32 GB of HBM2 across a 4096-bit bus are all categorical advantages, not incremental ones. The GTX 870M simply has no recorded answer to any of those figures.

The GTX 870M's case rests on a different axis. It is an MXM module: a mobile part with a 100 W TDP, no power connectors, and portable-device-dependent display outputs. It fits into laptops where the dual-slot, 267 mm-long, 250 W TITAN V CEO Edition, with its 6-pin plus 8-pin power connectors and 600 W suggested PSU, physically cannot go. If the question is which GPU can exist inside a portable chassis, the data answers it immediately.

The benchmark averages deserve one final caution. The GTX 870M's 9959 average is higher than the CEO Edition's 9037, but the database records no overlapping tests between them and no head-to-head results. The percentile standings, 48 versus 45, suggest the averages reflect methodology as much as capability. Treating the 870M as the "faster" card based on the averages alone would misread the data.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Here the record is unusually sparse: the database contains no shared benchmark results between these two GPUs, and the recorded win counts are zero for both. That absence is itself informative. The GTX 870M's results come from the Geekbench suite (Metal and OpenCL), tests typically associated with compute and API throughput on a broad range of hardware, while the TITAN V CEO Edition's results come from PassMark's G2D and G3D tests.

Within each card's own record, the spread is worth noting. The 870M's OpenCL score of 12630 is markedly higher than its Metal score of 7288, a gap that suggests its compute throughput is better exercised through OpenCL in the recorded data. The CEO Edition's G3D score of 16988 towers over its G2D score of 1086, which is a typical pattern for a 3D-focused GPU where 2D operations scale weakly with hardware capability.

The rival context is more instructive than the raw scores. The 870M's average of 9959 places it in a tight cluster: within about one percent of the Radeon Pro 5300M, the Quadro K5100M, the Radeon R9 M375, and the Quadro 6000. The CEO Edition's 9037 similarly sits within about two percent of the GTX 660, GTX 560, Radeon 550X, and Radeon 890M. In database terms, both cards are mid-pack performers relative to the populations they were measured against, and neither dominates its immediate neighborhood. The implication is curious: two GPUs separated by a specification chasm land, in the recorded averages, in nearly the same statistical neighborhood, and the different test suites are the most plausible explanation.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ on nearly every recorded field, and most gaps are large.

• Form factor and interface: The GTX 870M is an MXM Module on an MXM-B (3.0) bus with no power connectors. The TITAN V CEO Edition is a dual-slot desktop card on PCIe 3.0 x16 requiring one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector, with a 600 W suggested PSU.
• TDP: 100 W for the 870M versus 250 W for the CEO Edition.
• Process node: 28 nm for the 870M versus 12 nm for the CEO Edition, both fabbed at TSMC.
• Transistors and die: 3540 million transistors on a 294 mm² die (12.0M per mm²) versus 21,100 million on 815 mm² (25.9M per mm²).
• Clocks: 941 MHz base and 967 MHz boost for the 870M, with 5 Gbps effective memory. The CEO Edition runs 1200 MHz base and 1455 MHz boost, with memory at 1696 Mbps effective.
• Memory: 3 GB GDDR5 on a 192-bit bus at 120.0 GB/s versus 32 GB HBM2 on a 4096-bit bus at 868.4 GB/s.
• Shader resources: 1344 shading units, 112 TMUs, 24 ROPs versus 5120 shading units, 320 TMUs, 128 ROPs.
• Throughput: 27.08 GPixel/s pixel rate and 108.3 GTexel/s texture rate for the 870M versus 186.2 GPixel/s and 465.6 GTexel/s for the CEO Edition.
• Compute: 2.599 TFLOPS FP32 with no recorded FP16 for the 870M versus 14.90 TFLOPS FP32 and 29.80 TFLOPS FP16 for the CEO Edition.
• Display outputs: portable-device-dependent on the 870M versus one HDMI 2.0 and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs on the CEO Edition.
• API support: the 870M records DirectX 12 (11_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.175; the CEO Edition records DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4.
• Dimensions: the 870M's module dimensions are not recorded; the CEO Edition measures 267 mm long, 112 mm high, and 40 mm wide.

Architecture Differences

The architectural distance between these two is a story of two eras. The GTX 870M is a Kepler-generation part, the GK104 chip, positioned in the GeForce 800M line between the GeForce 700M predecessor and the GeForce 900M successor. The TITAN V CEO Edition is a Volta-generation GV100 chip, filed under GeForce 10 lineage with the GeForce 900 before it and the GeForce 20 after.

The node transition from 28 nm to 12 nm more than doubles transistor density in the record, from 12.0M per mm² to 25.9M per mm², and the CEO Edition's 815 mm² die is among the largest in any comparison. Volta's defining addition is visible in the tensor core count of 640, hardware the Kepler part predates entirely. Neither architecture carries RT cores.

Memory subsystems mark the sharpest divide. Kepler-era GDDR5 on a 192-bit bus delivering 120.0 GB/s stands against HBM2 stacked memory on a 4096-bit bus delivering 868.4 GB/s, a bandwidth multiple that reshapes every workload sensitive to memory, from large dataset compute to texture-heavy rendering. Feature-level API support also tilts toward the newer card, with a higher DirectX feature level (12_1 versus 11_0) and a newer Vulkan version (1.4 versus 1.2.175), though OpenGL support is identical at 4.6.

Where Each One Wins

Where the TITAN V CEO Edition wins: every hardware-bound workload in the record. Its roughly 5.7 times FP32 advantage, doubled again at FP16 through its 2:1 ratio, its 640 tensor cores, its 32 GB memory capacity, and its 868.4 GB/s of bandwidth make it the only option of the two for large-model compute, high-throughput rendering (465.6 GTexel/s versus 108.3), and high pixel output (186.2 GPixel/s versus 27.08). Its standalone display outputs and desktop PCIe interface also make it usable as a general-purpose desktop GPU in a way the MXM module is not.

Where the GTX 870M wins: the chassis. Its MXM-B (3.0) interface, 100 W TDP, and connector-free power delivery mean it operates where the 250 W, dual-slot, externally powered CEO Edition cannot. Its higher database average, 9959 versus 9037, is a quirk of differing test suites rather than a performance verdict, but its tight clustering within one percent of the Radeon Pro 5300M, Quadro K5100M, Radeon R9 M375, and Quadro 6000 confirms it as a competitive mid-pack entry within its own measured cohort. For the mobile context it was built for, that standing, not a comparison with a datacenter-class desktop part, is the relevant yardstick.