Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 285, which comes with a clock speed of 918 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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 285		8500 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 2110 (33%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 285		18 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (20%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon R9 285 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 should be a little bit (more or less 16%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14016 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a bit (more or less 1%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon R9 285, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 224 (1%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.