GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, 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 470		2937 points
	Difference: 3453 (118%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be 43% faster than the GeForce GTX 470 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 58080 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be quite a bit (about 161%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54808 (161%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be much (approximately 22%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 470, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5320 (22%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.