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Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

The Radeon HD 7870 has a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5500, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1670 MHz. The GDDR6 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 175 Watts
Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 5500 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 75776 (49%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 will be a lot (more or less 84%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 146960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 80000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 66960 (84%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 is much (approximately 67%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7870, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 32000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 21440 (67%)

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

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Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon RX 5500

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

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Model Radeon HD 7870 Radeon RX 5500
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year March 2012 October 2019
Code Name Pitcairn XT Navi 14 XT
Memory 2048 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 1000 MHz 1670 MHz
Memory Speed 4800 MHz 3500 GB/s
Power (Max TDP) 175 watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 153600 MB/sec 229376 MB/sec
Texel Rate 80000 Mtexels/sec 146960 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 32000 Mpixels/sec 53440 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1280 1408
Texture Mapping Units 80 88
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR6
Bus Width 256-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 7 nm
Transistors 2800 million 6400 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 4.0 ×16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.1 DirectX 12
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.2 OpenGL 4.6

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the 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 core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon RX 5500

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.

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