GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 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.

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 is 114% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 in general, because of its higher 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 (approximately 3%) better at AF 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 should be quite a bit (approximately 82%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.