GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

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 much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (about 62%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is a better choice, but not by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.