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GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

The GeForce GTX 980 features clock speeds of 1126 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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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

GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 7162 (112%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 980 should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be much (about 62%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55328 (62%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42464 (143%)

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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GeForce GTX 980

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Radeon HD 7870 XT

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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	GeForce GTX 980	Radeon HD 7870 XT
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	September 2014	November 2012
Code Name	GM204-400	Tahiti LE
Memory	4096 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	1126 MHz	925 MHz
Memory Speed	7000 MHz	6000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	165 watts	185 watts
Bandwidth	224000 MB/sec	192000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	144128 Mtexels/sec	88800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	72064 Mpixels/sec	29600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	2048	1536
Texture Mapping Units	128	96
Render Output Units	64	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	5200 million	4313 million
Bus	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 11.2	DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.5	OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few 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.

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