Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which has core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 1835 (29%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (40%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 38% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 72000 (38%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (more or less 33%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (33%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so in theory they should be equally good at at full screen anti-aliasing, and be able to handle the same screen resolutions. (explain)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.