Radeon HD 7870: specs and benchmarks

Aggregate performance score

Radeon HD 7870 provides acceptable gaming and benchmark performance at 12.00% of a leader's which is GeForce RTX 4090.

Summary

AMD started Radeon HD 7870 sales 5 March 2012 at a recommended price of $349 . This is a desktop graphics card based on a GCN 1.0 architecture and made with 28 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamer market. 2 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1.2 GHz are supplied, and together with 256 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 153.6 GB/s.

Compatibility-wise, this is a dual-slot graphics card attached via PCIe 3.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 241 mm. Two 6-pin power connectors are required, and power consumption is at 175 Watt.

Primary details

Some basic facts about Radeon HD 7870: architecture, market segment, release date etc.

Place in the ranking405
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation2.99
Power efficiency4.70of 100.00 (Radeon 890M)
ArchitectureGCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code namePitcairn
Market segmentDesktop
Release date5 March 2012 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$349 of 14,999 (Quadro Plex 7000)

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Detailed specifications

Radeon HD 7870's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon HD 7870's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.

Pipelines / CUDA cores1280of 21760 (GeForce RTX 5090)
Core clock speed1000 MHzof 2670 MHz (Arc B580)
Number of transistors2,800 millionof 208,000 million (B200 SXM 192 GB)
Manufacturing process technology28 nmof 3 nm (Arc Graphics 140V)
Power consumption (TDP)175 Wattof 2400 Watt (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem)
Texture fill rate80.00of 2,554 (Radeon Instinct MI300X)
Floating-point processing power2.56 TFLOPSof 109.7 (GeForce RTX 5090)
ROPs32of 192 (Radeon RX 7900 XTX)
TMUs80of 1280 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT)

Form factor & compatibility

This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon HD 7870 and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).

InterfacePCIe 3.0 x16
Length241 mm
Width2-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pin

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of memory installed on Radeon HD 7870: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.

Memory typeGDDR5
Maximum RAM amount2 GBof 294912 (Radeon Instinct MI325X)
Memory bus width256 Bitof 8192 Bit (Radeon Instinct MI250X)
Memory clock speed1200 MHzof 20000 (RTX 5000 Ada Generation Mobile)
Memory bandwidth153.6 GB/sof 5,171 GB/s (Radeon Instinct MI300X)
Shared memory-

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 7870. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.

Display Connectors1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Eyefinity+
HDMI+

API compatibility

APIs supported by Radeon HD 7870, sometimes including their particular versions.

DirectX12 (11_1)
Shader Model5.1
OpenGL4.6
OpenCL1.2
Vulkan1.2.131

Benchmark performance

Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon HD 7870. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

HD 7870 12.00

Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.

HD 7870 4625

3DMark 11 Performance GPU

3DMark 11 is an obsolete DirectX 11 benchmark by Futuremark. It used four tests based on two scenes, one being few submarines exploring the submerged wreck of a sunken ship, the other is an abandoned temple deep in the jungle. All the tests are heavy with volumetric lighting and tessellation, and despite being done in 1280x720 resolution, are relatively taxing. Discontinued in January 2020, 3DMark 11 is now superseded by Time Spy.

HD 7870 6194

3DMark Vantage Performance

3DMark Vantage is an outdated DirectX 10 benchmark using 1280x1024 screen resolution. It taxes the graphics card with two scenes, one depicting a girl escaping some militarized base located within a sea cave, the other displaying a space fleet attack on a defenseless planet. It was discontinued in April 2017, and Time Spy benchmark is now recommended to be used instead.

HD 7870 21348

Unigine Heaven 4.0

This is an old DirectX 11 benchmark, a newer version of Unigine 3.0 with relatively small differences. It displays a fantasy medieval town sprawling over several flying islands. The benchmark is still sometimes used, despite its significant age, as it was released back in 2013.

HD 7870 756

Gaming performance

Let's see how good Radeon HD 7870 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.

Average FPS across all PC games

Here are the average frames per second in a large set of popular modern games across different resolutions:

900p84
Full HD69

Cost per frame, $

1080p5.06

FPS performance in popular games

Full HD
Low Preset

Cyberpunk 2077 18−20

Full HD
Medium Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 27−30
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 18−20
Battlefield 5 35−40
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 24−27
Cyberpunk 2077 18−20
Far Cry 5 27−30
Far Cry New Dawn 30−35
Forza Horizon 4 80−85
Hitman 3 21−24
Horizon Zero Dawn 60−65
Metro Exodus 40−45
Red Dead Redemption 2 30−35
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 35−40
Watch Dogs: Legion 65−70

Full HD
High Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 27−30
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 18−20
Battlefield 5 35−40
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 24−27
Cyberpunk 2077 18−20
Far Cry 5 27−30
Far Cry New Dawn 30−35
Forza Horizon 4 80−85
Hitman 3 21−24
Horizon Zero Dawn 60−65
Metro Exodus 40−45
Red Dead Redemption 2 30−35
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 35−40
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 30−33
Watch Dogs: Legion 65−70

Full HD
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 27−30
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 18−20
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 24−27
Cyberpunk 2077 18−20
Far Cry 5 27−30
Forza Horizon 4 80−85
Hitman 3 21−24
Horizon Zero Dawn 60−65
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 35−40
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 20
Watch Dogs: Legion 65−70

Full HD
Epic Preset

Red Dead Redemption 2 30−35

1440p
High Preset

Battlefield 5 21−24
Far Cry New Dawn 18−20

1440p
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 12−14
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 8−9
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 12−14
Cyberpunk 2077 6−7
Far Cry 5 14−16
Forza Horizon 4 55−60
Hitman 3 14−16
Horizon Zero Dawn 24−27
Metro Exodus 18−20
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 18−20
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 12−14
Watch Dogs: Legion 75−80

1440p
Epic Preset

Red Dead Redemption 2 20−22

4K
High Preset

Battlefield 5 10−12
Far Cry New Dawn 9−10
Hitman 3 8−9
Horizon Zero Dawn 55−60
Metro Exodus 10−12
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 10−11

4K
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 7−8
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 5−6
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 6−7
Cyberpunk 2077 2−3
Far Cry 5 6−7
Forza Horizon 4 16−18
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 10−11
Watch Dogs: Legion 5−6

4K
Epic Preset

Red Dead Redemption 2 10−12

Closest competitors

Radeon HD 7870's performance relative to its closest rivals among desktop graphics cards.


Radeon R9 370 102.08
Radeon HD 7870 100

NVIDIA equivalent

According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon HD 7870 is GeForce GTX 580, which is nearly equal in speed and lower by 1 position in our ranking.

Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon HD 7870:

Similar GPUs

Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

Recommended processors

These processors are most commonly used with Radeon HD 7870 according to our statistics.

All comparisons with Radeon HD 7870

Community ratings

Here you can see the user rating of the graphics card, as well as rate it yourself.


3.7 641 vote

Rate Radeon HD 7870 on a scale of 1 to 5:

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Questions & comments

Here you can ask a question about Radeon HD 7870, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.