Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380X, which features a clock speed of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, 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

Radeon R9 380X		9519 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 3289 (53%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 380X		19 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (19%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380X should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X will be quite a bit (approximately 55%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44160 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a little bit (about 3%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 380X, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 960 (3%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.