GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 4477 (70%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (27%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970 should theoretically be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a lot (more or less 23%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (about 127%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37600 (127%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.