Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 470, which features a clock speed of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1650 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

Radeon RX 470		11756 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 3531 (43%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 470		26 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (24%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be much faster than the Radeon RX 470 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
	Difference: 52800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 will be just a bit (more or less 0%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 470 is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32 (0%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.