GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs 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 7870 XT		6390 points
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 1434 (29%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 should theoretically be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 384 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much (more or less 80%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39392 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be much (more or less 25%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7456 (25%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many 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.