Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1120 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this particular card. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480 4GB		267 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 95 (55%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480 4GB		25 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (56%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 480 4GB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 75776 (49%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is much (about 102%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81280 (102%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB will be a bit (approximately 12%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7870, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (12%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 number of pixels that 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 ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few 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.