GeForce GTX 1060 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 SPUs, 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

GeForce GTX 1060		12359 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 5969 (93%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1060 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 will be quite a bit (approximately 36%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31680 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42688 (144%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 potential to reach the max fill rate.