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Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

The Radeon HD 5970 makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1600 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 175 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 119 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 102400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be much (approximately 190%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 80000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 152000 (190%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (more or less 190%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7870, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 32000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 60800 (190%)

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

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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

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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 5970 Radeon HD 7870
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year November 2009 March 2012
Code Name Hemlock XT Pitcairn XT
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 2048 MB
Core Speed 725 MHz (x2) 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz (x2) 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 294 watts 175 watts
Bandwidth 256000 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 232000 Mtexels/sec 80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 92800 Mpixels/sec 32000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600 (x2) 1280
Texture Mapping Units 160 (x2) 80
Render Output Units 64 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2154 million 2800 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high 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 number 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7870

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.

Comments

One Response to “Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 7870”
Gigabyte 7870 OC 2gb vs. 5970 2Gb says:

[...] Gigabyte 7870 OC 2gb vs. 5970 2Gb Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 7870 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare danach soll die 5970 besser sein, also ist die 7870 besser? Zitieren [...]

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