Radeon HD 7850 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features core clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 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

Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 1190 (23%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (15%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 7850 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be much (about 61%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33760 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (8%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.