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Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

The Radeon HD 5870 has a core clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870 188 Watts
Radeon HD 7970 250 Watts
Difference: 62 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 will be 72% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 110400 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (more or less 74%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870 68000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 50400 (74%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a little bit (more or less 9%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5870, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870 27200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 2400 (9%)

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

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Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5870 Radeon HD 7970
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year September 23, 2009 January 2012
Code Name Cypress XT Tahiti XT
Memory 1024 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 850 MHz 925 MHz
Memory Speed 4800 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 188 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 153600 MB/sec 264000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 68000 Mtexels/sec 118400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 27200 Mpixels/sec 29600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600(320x5) 2048
Texture Mapping Units 80 128
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2154 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe 2.1 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.2 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

One Response to “Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 7970”
PC Zusammnstellung, was meint ihr? says:

[...] ist ja schnell genug, aber wenns am Geld nicht fehlt hol dir die 7970. Kannst ja mal hier gucken, Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 7970 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare Zitieren + Antworten Gehe zu: Komplette Rechner: Zusammenstellung [...]

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