Radeon HD 5750 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which uses a 28 nm design. ATi has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		86 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5750 1GB		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (109%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (approximately 217%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5750 1GB		25200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54800 (217%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (approximately 186%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5750 1GB		11200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (186%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus 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 better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.