Radeon HD 7850 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 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 HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 3025 (58%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (62%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 72% faster than the Radeon HD 7850 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 110400 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (approximately 115%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63360 (115%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (8%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.