GeForce GTX 1050 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 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

GeForce GTX 1050		6657 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 427 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 38912 (34%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (about 48%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 1050. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050		54160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25840 (48%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 should be quite a bit (more or less 35%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		43328 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11328 (35%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip can 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 Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.