GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

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

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 7870		6230 points
GeForce GTX 470		2937 points
	Difference: 3293 (112%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 is 15% faster than the GeForce GTX 470 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 19680 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be much (more or less 135%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46008 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (more or less 32%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 470, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7720 (32%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.