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Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon HD 7970
Intro
The Radeon HD 7870 uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which features 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 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.
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 |
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8225 points |
| Radeon HD 7870 |
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6230 points |
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Ethereum Mining Hash Rate
| Radeon HD 7970 |
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21 Mh/s |
| Radeon HD 7870 |
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16 Mh/s |
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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks
Power Consumption (Max TDP)
| Radeon HD 7870 |
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175 Watts |
| Radeon HD 7970 |
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250 Watts |
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Memory Bandwidth
In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)
| Radeon HD 7970 |
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264000 MB/sec |
| Radeon HD 7870 |
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153600 MB/sec |
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Texel Rate
The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (about 48%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)| Radeon HD 7970 |
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118400 Mtexels/sec |
| Radeon HD 7870 |
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80000 Mtexels/sec |
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Pixel Rate
If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)| Radeon HD 7870 |
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32000 Mpixels/sec |
| Radeon HD 7970 |
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29600 Mpixels/sec |
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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
Radeon HD 7870Amazon.com
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Radeon HD 7970Amazon.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
| Model | Radeon HD 7870 | Radeon HD 7970 |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | AMD | AMD |
| Year | March 2012 | January 2012 |
| Code Name | Pitcairn XT | Tahiti XT |
| Memory | 2048 MB | 3072 MB |
| Core Speed | 1000 MHz | 925 MHz |
| Memory Speed | 4800 MHz | 5500 MHz |
| Power (Max TDP) | 175 watts | 250 watts |
| Bandwidth | 153600 MB/sec | 264000 MB/sec |
| Texel Rate | 80000 Mtexels/sec | 118400 Mtexels/sec |
| Pixel Rate | 32000 Mpixels/sec | 29600 Mpixels/sec |
| Unified Shaders | 1280 | 2048 |
| Texture Mapping Units | 80 | 128 |
| Render Output Units | 32 | 32 |
| Bus Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| Bus Width | 256-bit | 384-bit |
| Fab Process | 28 nm | 28 nm |
| Transistors | 2800 million | 4313 million |
| Bus | PCIe 3.0 x16 | PCIe 3.0 x16 |
| DirectX Version | DirectX 11.1 | DirectX 11.1 |
| OpenGL Version | OpenGL 4.2 | OpenGL 4.2 |
Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.
Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.
Radeon HD 7870Amazon.com
Check prices at:
|
Radeon HD 7970Amazon.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
3 Responses to “Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon HD 7970”people at hardware compare do you mind telling me how the 7970 is better then the 7870 at everything else but the 7870 is better at handling higher resolutions? makes no sense
Has a higher pixel rate
The reason the 7870 only has the advantage of handling higher resolutions easier than the 7970 is probably due to the fact that the video decoder inside the 7970 has been downgraded slightly. I try to run dual monitors and I end up with an increase of 10 degrees on my video card as well as the decoder potentially giving up and starting to display a horribly, HORRIBLY distorted signal.
Whoever thought downgrading the decoder for more performance was a good idea was obviously not quite thinking...however, I still appreciate how powerful this video card is even by today's standards.