Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 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 R9 270X		6590 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 360 (6%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 270X		177 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 5 (3%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (13%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same texel rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at anisotropic filtering. (explain)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same pixel fill rate, so theoretically they should be equally good at at FSAA, 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.