Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 7950		7731 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 1341 (21%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7950		21 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (40%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 is 25% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 will be a small bit (approximately 1%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.