GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, 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 980		13552 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 7162 (112%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 will be 17% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (approximately 62%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55328 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is much (approximately 143%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42464 (143%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.