Compare any two graphics cards:
VS

Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

The Radeon HD 7970 uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 580, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1257 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 2000 MHz on this particular card. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon RX 580 13630 points
Radeon HD 7970 8225 points
Difference: 5405 (66%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580 28 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970 21 Mh/s
Difference: 7 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580 185 Watts
Radeon HD 7970 250 Watts
Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be just a bit better than the Radeon RX 580 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 580 262144 MB/sec
Difference: 1856 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is a lot (approximately 53%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 580 181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970 118400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 62608 (53%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 580 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 580 40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970 29600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 10624 (36%)

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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon RX 580

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Display Specifications

Hide Specifications

Model Radeon HD 7970 Radeon RX 580
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year January 2012 April 2017
Code Name Tahiti XT Polaris 20
Memory 3072 MB 8192 MB
Core Speed 925 MHz 1257 MHz
Memory Speed 5500 MHz 8000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 185 watts
Bandwidth 264000 MB/sec 262144 MB/sec
Texel Rate 118400 Mtexels/sec 181008 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 29600 Mpixels/sec 40224 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 2048 2304
Texture Mapping Units 128 144
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 14 nm
Transistors 4313 million 5700 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.1 DirectX 12.0
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.2 OpenGL 4.5

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one 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 better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon RX 580

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

Be the first to leave a comment!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*

WordPress Anti Spam by WP-SpamShield