GeForce GTX 1080 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units 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

GeForce GTX 1080		21942 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 15552 (243%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1080		20 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1080		180 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 1080 should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		327680 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 135680 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 should be much (more or less 190%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		257120 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 168320 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1080 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		102848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 73248 (247%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.