GeForce RTX 3050 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3050		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce RTX 3050 should be 49% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 75776 (49%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3050 should be much (more or less 55%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44160 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3050 will be much (approximately 55%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7870, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		49664 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17664 (55%)

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 moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.