Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, 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

Geforce GTX 670		7351 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 1121 (18%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
Geforce GTX 670		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (23%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Geforce GTX 670 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 will be a lot (more or less 28%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22480 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a small bit (approximately 9%) faster with regards to AA than the Geforce GTX 670, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2720 (9%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.