Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7770, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 108 Watts (135%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 7770 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (113%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is much (about 70%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (approximately 70%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7770, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (70%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.