Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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 7950		7731 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 1341 (21%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7950		21 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (40%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 is 25% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is just a bit (more or less 1%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 800 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a bit (approximately 16%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 7950, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (16%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 ability to reach the max fill rate.