GeForce GTX 1080 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units 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 1080		21942 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 15552 (243%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1080		20 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1080		180 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1080 will be 71% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		327680 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 135680 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 should be a lot (about 190%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		257120 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 168320 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1080 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		102848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 73248 (247%)

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 over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.