Radeon HD 7870 vs HD 6870 X2

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Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the rankingnot rated400
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluationno data2.90
Power efficiencyno data4.95
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code nameBartsPitcairn
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date8 July 2011 (13 years ago)5 March 2012 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$520 $349

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores11201280
Core clock speed900 MHz1000 MHz
Number of transistors1,700 million2,800 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)300 Watt175 Watt
Texture fill rate50.4080.00
Floating-point processing power2.016 TFLOPS2.56 TFLOPS
ROPs3232
TMUs5680

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16PCIe 3.0 x16
Length304 mm241 mm
Width2-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectorsno data2x 6-pin

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR5GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount1 GB2 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit256 Bit
Memory clock speed1050 MHz1200 MHz
Memory bandwidth134.4 GB/s153.6 GB/s
Shared memory--

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Eyefinity-+
HDMI++

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX11.2 (11_0)12 (11_1)
Shader Model5.05.1
OpenGL4.44.6
OpenCL1.21.2
VulkanN/A1.2.131

Pros & cons summary


Recency 8 July 2011 5 March 2012
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 2 GB
Chip lithography 40 nm 28 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 300 Watt 175 Watt

HD 7870 has an age advantage of 7 months, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, a 42.9% more advanced lithography process, and 71.4% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 6870 X2 and Radeon HD 7870. We've got no test results to judge.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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AMD Radeon HD 6870 X2
Radeon HD 6870 X2
AMD Radeon HD 7870
Radeon HD 7870

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Community ratings

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5 5 votes

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3.7 638 votes

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Questions & comments

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