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Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

The Radeon HD 5870 uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific card. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT 185 Watts
Radeon HD 5870 188 Watts
Difference: 3 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT is 25% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT 192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 38400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be quite a bit (about 31%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT 88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870 68000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 20800 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT 29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870 27200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 2400 (9%)

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

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Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7870 XT

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5870 Radeon HD 7870 XT
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year September 23, 2009 November 2012
Code Name Cypress XT Tahiti LE
Memory 1024 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 850 MHz 925 MHz
Memory Speed 4800 MHz 6000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 188 watts 185 watts
Bandwidth 153600 MB/sec 192000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 68000 Mtexels/sec 88800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 27200 Mpixels/sec 29600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600(320x5) 1536
Texture Mapping Units 80 96
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2154 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe 2.1 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.2 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7870 XT

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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