Radeon RX 480 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Radeon RX 480
Memory: 8192Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 29 Jun 2016
Radeon RX 480
Radeon HD 7870 XT
Memory: 2048Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 19 Nov 2012
Radeon HD 7870 XT

Summary

Synthetic performance index

  • Radeon RX 480
    214%
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    100%

Relative performance

Reasons to consider Radeon RX 480

This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support.
Around 114% higher average synthetic performance.
Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
Supports FreeSync
Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
Supports TrueAudio
Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications

Reasons to consider Radeon HD 7870 XT

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Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications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 RX 480

HWBench recommends Radeon RX 480

The Radeon RX 480 is the better performing card based on the synthetic benchmarks used (1 benchmarks).


Specifications

Core Configuration

Radeon RX 480Radeon HD 7870 XT
GPU NameEllesmere (Ellesmere XT)vsTahiti (Tahiti LE)
Fab Process14 nmvs28 nm
Die Size232 mm²vs352 mm²
Transistors5,700 millionvs4,313 million
Shaders2304vs1536
Compute Units36vs24
Core clock1120 MHzvs925 MHz
ROPs32vs32
TMUs144vs96

Memory Configuration

Radeon RX 480Radeon HD 7870 XT
Memory TypeGDDR5vsGDDR5
Bus Width256 bitvs256 bit
Memory Speed2000 MHz
8000 MHz effective
vs1500 MHz
6000 MHz effective
Memory Size8192 Mbvs2048 Mb

Additional details

Radeon RX 480Radeon HD 7870 XT
TDP150 wattsvs185 watts
Release Date29 Jun 2016vs19 Nov 2012

Raw Performance comparison

Pixel Rate

  • Radeon RX 480
    40.50 GP/s
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    29.60 GP/s

GigaPixels - higher is better

Texel Rate

  • Radeon RX 480
    182.30 GT/s
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    88.80 GT/s

GigaTexels - higher is better

Memory bandwidth

  • Radeon RX 480
    256.00 GB/s
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    192.00 GB/s

GB/s - higher is better

Single precision performance

  • Radeon RX 480
    5834.00 GFLOPs
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    2842.00 GFLOPs

GFLOPs - higher is better

Synthetic benchmarks

3DMark 11

  • Radeon RX 480
    18430
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT
    8590

Points (higher is better)