Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 480, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up 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 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 5124 (62%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (29%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be a little bit superior to the Radeon RX 480 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 1856 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be much (about 36%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42880 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be quite a bit (approximately 21%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 7970, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.