Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480, which comes with a clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 1% quicker than the Radeon RX 480 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 is quite a bit (approximately 36%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is superior to the Radeon HD 7970, by far. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.