Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 285, which features core clock speeds of 918 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 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

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 just a bit better than the Radeon R9 285 overall. (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 bit (more or less 16%) faster with regards to 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 is a bit (about 1%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 285, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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