Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Radeon HD 5870
Memory: 1024Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 23 Sep 2009
Radeon HD 5870
Radeon HD 7870 XT
Memory: 2048Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 19 Nov 2012
Radeon HD 7870 XT

Summary

Synthetic performance index

  • Radeon HD 5870
    100%
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    200%

Relative performance

Reasons to consider Radeon HD 5870

Based on an outdated architecture (ATI TeraScale), there are no performance optimizations for current games and applications

Reasons to consider Radeon HD 7870 XT

This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support.
Around 100% higher average synthetic performance.
Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
Supports Mantle
Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications

Radeon HD 7870 XT

HWBench recommends Radeon HD 7870 XT

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is the better performing card based on the synthetic benchmarks used (1 benchmarks).


Specifications

Core Configuration

Radeon HD 5870Radeon HD 7870 XT
GPU NameCypress (Cypress XT)vsTahiti (Tahiti LE)
Fab Process40 nmvs28 nm
Die Size334 mm²vs352 mm²
Transistors2,154 millionvs4,313 million
Shaders1600vs1536
Compute Units20vs24
Core clock850 MHzvs925 MHz
ROPs32vs32
TMUs80vs96

Memory Configuration

Radeon HD 5870Radeon HD 7870 XT
Memory TypeGDDR5vsGDDR5
Bus Width256 bitvs256 bit
Memory Speed1200 MHz
4800 MHz effective
vs1500 MHz
6000 MHz effective
Memory Size1024 Mbvs2048 Mb

Additional details

Radeon HD 5870Radeon HD 7870 XT
TDP188 wattsvs185 watts
Release Date23 Sep 2009vs19 Nov 2012

Raw Performance comparison

Pixel Rate

  • Radeon HD 5870
    27.20 GP/s
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    29.60 GP/s

GigaPixels - higher is better

Texel Rate

  • Radeon HD 5870
    68.00 GT/s
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    88.80 GT/s

GigaTexels - higher is better

Memory bandwidth

  • Radeon HD 5870
    154.00 GB/s
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    192.00 GB/s

GB/s - higher is better

Single precision performance

  • Radeon HD 5870
    2720.00 GFLOPs
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    2842.00 GFLOPs

GFLOPs - higher is better

Synthetic benchmarks

3DMark 11

  • Radeon HD 5870
    4290
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    8590

Points (higher is better)