Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Radeon R9 270X		6590 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 200 (3%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (20%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 270X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is just a bit (approximately 11%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a small bit (about 8%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.