Radeon HD 8990 OEM vs HD 7870

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking403not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation3.00no data
Power efficiency4.79no data
ArchitectureGCN 1.0 (2011−2020)GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code namePitcairnMalta
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date5 March 2012 (12 years ago)24 April 2013 (11 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$349 $999

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 cores12802048
Core clock speed1000 MHz950 MHz
Boost clock speedno data1000 MHz
Number of transistors2,800 million4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)175 Watt375 Watt
Texture fill rate80.00128.0
Floating-point processing power2.56 TFLOPS4.096 TFLOPS
ROPs3232
TMUs80128

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 3.0 x16PCIe 3.0 x16
Length241 mm307 mm
Width2-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pin2x 8-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 amount2 GB3 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit384 Bit
Memory clock speed1200 MHz1500 MHz
Memory bandwidth153.6 GB/s288.0 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 Connectors1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort1x DVI, 4x mini-DisplayPort
Eyefinity+-
HDMI+-

API compatibility

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

DirectX12 (11_1)12 (11_1)
Shader Model5.15.1
OpenGL4.64.6
OpenCL1.21.2
Vulkan1.2.1311.2.131

Pros & cons summary


Recency 5 March 2012 24 April 2013
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 3 GB
Power consumption (TDP) 175 Watt 375 Watt

HD 7870 has 114.3% lower power consumption.

HD 8990 OEM, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 1 year, and a 50% higher maximum VRAM amount.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 8990 OEM. 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 7870
Radeon HD 7870
AMD Radeon HD 8990 OEM
Radeon HD 8990 OEM

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Community ratings

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3.7 640 votes

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Questions & comments

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