Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which has a core clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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.

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480 4GB		25 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 10 (67%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 480 4GB should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 37376 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is a lot (more or less 82%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72480 (82%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 4GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6240 (21%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.