Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 580, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1257 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 2000 MHz on this particular card. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 580		13630 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 5405 (66%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically perform a bit faster than the Radeon RX 580 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 1856 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is much (about 53%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62608 (53%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 580 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10624 (36%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.