Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which features clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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

In theory, the Geforce GTX 690 should be 150% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be a lot (more or less 193%) better 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is a better choice, and very much so. (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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.