Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is just a bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a small bit (approximately 18%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5870, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (18%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.