Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB is a little bit (approximately 1%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 800 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a little bit (about 16%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (16%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.