GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 7322 (118%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (25%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 236 (137%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be a lot (more or less 80%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64128 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40064 (125%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 get to the maximum fill rate.