Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 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

Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 160 (3%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870		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		175 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a little bit (more or less 11%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a small bit (about 8%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

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 across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.