Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 580, which has core clock speeds of 1257 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 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 RX 580		13630 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 5405 (66%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon RX 580 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 1856 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be quite a bit (about 53%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62608 (53%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is much (more or less 36%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10624 (36%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.