Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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

Geforce GTX 670		7351 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 1121 (18%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
Geforce GTX 670		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (23%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 670 should be 25% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 is a lot (about 28%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22480 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2720 (9%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.