Radeon HD 5670 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which has 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 114 Watts (187%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5670 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (140%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (about 416%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64500 (416%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25800 (416%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.