Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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

Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 1260 (20%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Geforce GTX 680 should theoretically be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is a lot (more or less 45%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39968 (45%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2592 (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.