GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features core clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs 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
GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
	Difference: 2740 (75%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 480 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 14592 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be much (approximately 111%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46800 (111%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is just a bit (about 14%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (14%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.