Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 5700 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 5700 XT, which features a core clock frequency of 1605 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon RX 5700 XT		225 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 5700 XT should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT		458752 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 305152 (199%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5700 XT is a lot (approximately 221%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT		256800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 176800 (221%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 5700 XT will be a lot (more or less 221%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT		102720 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 70720 (221%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.