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Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

The Radeon HD 7870 makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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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, the Radeon R9 270X should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

Both cards have the exact same texel fill rate, so theoretically they should perform equally good at at AF. (explain)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same pixel rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at anti-aliasing, and be capable of handling the same 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

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Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

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Radeon R9 270X

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 7870 Radeon R9 270X
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year March 2012 October 2013
Code Name Pitcairn XT Curacao XT
Memory 2048 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 1000 MHz 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 4800 MHz 5600 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 175 watts 180 watts
Bandwidth 153600 MB/sec 179200 MB/sec
Texel Rate 80000 Mtexels/sec 80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 32000 Mpixels/sec 32000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1280 1280
Texture Mapping Units 80 80
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2800 million 2800 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.1 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.2 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 270X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

5 Responses to “Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R9 270X”
mike says:

The fact that the Memory Bandwidth is higher at the r9 270x means that she will perform better at more than one screen or on a TV screen ,for example

habib says:

Dear sir

please i need your help.

i have old motherboard,it does not have (BUS PCIe 3.0 16).

it does have (PCIe 2.1 16)

please Does these graphic card(R9 270X) OR (HD 7870 2GB),works with my motherboard.

please i don't want any error or Blue screen

i hope to hear from you very soon

my kindest regards
habib

Carl says:

Habib, you are fine. A 3.0 card is backwards compatible with 2.1

JAKMACK says:

Why is the ASUS 7870 so much more expensive than the ASUS R2? Please someone break that down.

james says:

jakmack, it is because that was the final price of the product, they no longer make the 7870

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