Radeon HD 7850 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 3025 (58%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (62%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 will be 72% faster than the Radeon HD 7850 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 110400 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (about 115%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63360 (115%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (8%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.