GeForce GTX 1080 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 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 1080		21942 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 15712 (252%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1080		553 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 381 (222%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1080		20 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (25%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 1080		180 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 1080 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		327680 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 174080 (113%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 will be a lot (about 221%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		257120 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 177120 (221%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1080 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		102848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 70848 (221%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.