GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which has a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The GeForce GTX 590, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be just a bit (about 3%) more effective at texture 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 a lot (more or less 82%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.