Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 470, which features a core clock frequency of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1650 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon RX 470		11756 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 3531 (43%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 470		26 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (24%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon RX 470 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
	Difference: 52800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 is a bit (more or less 0%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 470 is superior to the Radeon HD 7970, but only just. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32 (0%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of 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.