Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has a clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, 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

Theoretically, the Geforce GTX 680 should be a small 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 should be a lot (more or less 45%) more effective at AF 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

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is a better choice, but only just. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface 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 ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 output 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.