GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 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

Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 1274 (26%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38784 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (more or less 62%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30592 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be a small bit (more or less 16%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5056 (16%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock 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 bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.