GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 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

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 590 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (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 just a bit (more or less 14%) more effective at 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 should be quite a bit (more or less 97%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.