Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1425 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 380X		9519 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 3129 (49%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 380X		19 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (27%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be 5% quicker than the Radeon R9 380X overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X is much (approximately 40%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35360 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X will be a bit (about 5%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1440 (5%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.