GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

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

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 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

The GeForce GTX 980, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (approximately 62%) more effective at AF 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

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot (more or less 143%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.