Radeon HD 7770 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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 7870		6230 points
Radeon HD 7770		3180 points
	Difference: 3050 (96%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (119%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 is 113% quicker than the Radeon HD 7770 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (113%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (more or less 100%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (about 100%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7770, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (100%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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