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Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

The Radeon HD 5970 features a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which has GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 175 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 119 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 102400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (approximately 190%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 80000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 152000 (190%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (about 190%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 32000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 60800 (190%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5970 Radeon HD 7870
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year November 2009 March 2012
Code Name Hemlock XT Pitcairn XT
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 2048 MB
Core Speed 725 MHz (x2) 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz (x2) 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 294 watts 175 watts
Bandwidth 256000 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 232000 Mtexels/sec 80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 92800 Mpixels/sec 32000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600 (x2) 1280
Texture Mapping Units 160 (x2) 80
Render Output Units 64 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2154 million 2800 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

One Response to “Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 7870”
Gigabyte 7870 OC 2gb vs. 5970 2Gb says:

[...] Gigabyte 7870 OC 2gb vs. 5970 2Gb Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 7870 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare danach soll die 5970 besser sein, also ist die 7870 besser? Zitieren [...]

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