Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1120 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 2000 MHz on this model. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 RX 480		13349 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 6959 (109%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 12 (80%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 480 is 37% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 70144 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 will be much (more or less 82%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72480 (82%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6240 (21%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.