Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features GPU clock speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 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

The Geforce GTX 690, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is a lot (more or less 164%) better at anisotropic filtering 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is superior to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and very much so. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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