Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1400 MHz on this 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 HD 7870 XT		6390 points
Radeon R9 270		5943 points
	Difference: 447 (8%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 0 (0%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon R9 270 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is quite a bit (about 23%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (23%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (3%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.