Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 7900 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 7900 XT, which uses a 5 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1500 MHz. The GDDR6 memory runs at a frequency of 2500 MHz on this specific card. It features 5376 SPUs along with 336 TAUs and 192 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon RX 7900 XT		300 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 7900 XT should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XT		819200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 665600 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 7900 XT will be a lot (more or less 530%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XT		504000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 424000 (530%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 7900 XT will be quite a bit (more or less 800%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XT		288000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 256000 (800%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.