GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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 590		6680 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 290 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 136320 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is just a bit (about 14%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11104 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28672 (97%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number 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 amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.