Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which comes with a clock speed of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It features 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		6230 points
	Difference: 7400 (119%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		315 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 143 (83%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 12 (75%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 580 is 71% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 108544 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is quite a bit (more or less 126%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 101008 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be quite a bit (about 26%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8224 (26%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.