GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. 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.

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		19 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (27%)

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		12185 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 5795 (91%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is 2% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is a lot (approximately 22%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19632 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, 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 can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.