GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 450 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (109%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 should be 114% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 174720 (114%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a bit (approximately 3%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2304 (3%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26272 (82%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.