Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 285, which has a GPU core clock speed of 918 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1792 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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

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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should perform a bit faster than 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 will be just a bit (more or less 16%) better at texture filtering 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, but not by far. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.