GeForce RTX 2060 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with GPU core speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 2060		160 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce RTX 2060 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

GeForce RTX 2060		344064 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 152064 (79%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 2060 is much (approximately 84%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce RTX 2060		163800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75000 (84%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 2060 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce RTX 2060		65520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35920 (121%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.