Radeon HD 5670 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with 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

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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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 should perform 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 is much (more or less 416%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (approximately 416%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5670, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.