GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, 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 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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980 is 46% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot (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 (more or less 125%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.