Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which features a core clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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.

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480 4GB		25 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 10 (67%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 480 4GB should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 37376 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should be quite a bit (about 82%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72480 (82%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB will be much (about 21%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.