Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 680		7650 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 1260 (20%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 680, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is a lot (approximately 45%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39968 (45%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a small bit (about 9%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2592 (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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.