Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 7970		8225 points
Radeon R9 270X		6590 points
	Difference: 1635 (25%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (17%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 270X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 84800 (47%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a lot (approximately 48%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38400 (48%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a little bit (more or less 8%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7970, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.