GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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

GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 450 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (109%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 590 should be 114% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 174720 (114%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a little bit (more or less 3%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2304 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is quite a bit (more or less 82%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26272 (82%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.