GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs 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.

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		19 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (27%)

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		12185 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 5795 (91%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should theoretically be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be much (approximately 22%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19632 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be a lot (more or less 144%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42688 (144%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.