GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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
GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
	Difference: 2740 (75%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 480 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 14592 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much (approximately 111%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46800 (111%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a little bit (more or less 14%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (14%)

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 in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's 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 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.