Compare any two graphics cards:
VS

GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

The GeForce GTX 480 uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 924 MHz on this specific card. It features 480 SPUs along with 60 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which features core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 7870 6230 points
GeForce GTX 480 3650 points
Difference: 2580 (71%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 175 Watts
GeForce GTX 480 250 Watts
Difference: 75 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 should be 16% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480 177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 23808 (16%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (approximately 90%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480 42000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 38000 (90%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is a bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7870, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480 33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 32000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 1600 (5%)

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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTX 480

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.

Specifications

Display Specifications

Hide Specifications

Model GeForce GTX 480 Radeon HD 7870
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year March 2010 March 2012
Code Name GF100 Pitcairn XT
Memory 1536 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 700 MHz 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 3696 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 175 watts
Bandwidth 177408 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 42000 Mtexels/sec 80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 33600 Mpixels/sec 32000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 480 1280
Texture Mapping Units 60 80
Render Output Units 48 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 3000 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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTX 480

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

Be the first to leave a comment!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*

WordPress Anti Spam by WP-SpamShield