GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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
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

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GTX 470 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much (more or less 161%) more effective at texture 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 should be a lot (approximately 22%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 470, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.