Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units 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 R9 270X		6590 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 200 (3%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (20%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should perform a bit faster than the Radeon R9 270X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be just a bit (approximately 11%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.