Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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 690		13111 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 6881 (110%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Geforce GTX 690 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 230912 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be much (approximately 193%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 154240 (193%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 will be much (approximately 83%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26560 (83%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.