Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 285, which has GPU clock speed of 918 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 285		8500 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 2110 (33%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 285		18 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (20%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a little bit faster than the Radeon R9 285 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 is a small bit (more or less 16%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14016 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a little bit (approximately 1%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 285, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 224 (1%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.