Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which features core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs 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 270		5943 points
	Difference: 2282 (38%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (40%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 47% faster than the Radeon R9 270 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (more or less 64%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46400 (64%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a little bit (approximately 3%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 270, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (3%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.