GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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		6230 points
	Difference: 7322 (118%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (25%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 236 (137%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (more or less 80%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64128 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be quite a bit (about 125%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40064 (125%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.