Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 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

Geforce GTX 690		13111 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 6721 (105%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Geforce GTX 690 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 192512 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 will be a lot (approximately 164%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 145440 (164%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be quite a bit (more or less 98%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28960 (98%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.