GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

The GeForce GTX 560 uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 810 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1001 MHz on this specific model. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. ATi has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 560 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 7870 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 560	Radeon HD 7870
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	May 2011	March 2012
Code Name	GF114	Pitcairn XT
Fab Process	40 nm	28 nm
Bus	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Memory	1024 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	810 MHz	1000 MHz
Shader Speed	1600 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1001 MHz (4004 MHz effective)	1200 MHz (4800 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders	336	1280
Texture Mapping Units	56	80
Render Output Units	32	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 4.2
Power (Max TDP)	150 watts	175 watts
Shader Model	5.0	5.0
Bandwidth	128128 MB/sec	153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate	45360 Mtexels/sec	80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	25920 Mpixels/sec	32000 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.