Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

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

Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 1260 (20%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Geforce GTX 680 should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is much (more or less 45%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39968 (45%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is a bit (more or less 9%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2592 (9%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.