GeForce GTX 1060 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 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

GeForce GTX 1060		311 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 139 (81%)

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 1060		12359 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 6129 (98%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 1060 should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (28%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 will be much (more or less 51%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40480 (51%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 will be a lot (more or less 126%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40288 (126%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.