Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 480, which has a clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 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 RX 480		13349 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 7119 (114%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		280 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 108 (63%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 11 (69%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 480 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 108544 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 will be much (approximately 102%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81280 (102%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (12%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.