GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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 590		6680 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 290 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 590, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 136320 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a little bit (about 14%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11104 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is quite a bit (about 97%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28672 (97%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.