GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

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

The GeForce GTX 480 should theoretically be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is much (more or less 90%) better at texture 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 little bit (approximately 5%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and 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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill 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 max fill rate.