GeForce RTX 3050 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3050		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce RTX 3050 should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 37376 (19%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3050 should be quite a bit (approximately 40%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35360 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3050 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		49664 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20064 (68%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.