Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 480, which has GPU core speed of 1120 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 will be 1% faster 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 should be a lot (about 36%) more effective 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing 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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one 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 the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.