Radeon HD 7850 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 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 HD 7870 XT		6390 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 1190 (23%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (15%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT is 25% quicker than the Radeon HD 7850 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a lot (about 61%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33760 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (8%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.