Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, 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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		229 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 57 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be a small bit (approximately 12%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (12%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (about 25%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (25%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.