Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which comes with a core clock speed of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised 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 580		13630 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 7240 (113%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 13 (87%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 580 should be 37% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 70144 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be much (about 104%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92208 (104%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be quite a bit (about 36%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10624 (36%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.