Radeon RX 550 640SP vs HD 7870

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking407not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation3.00no data
Power efficiency4.70no data
ArchitectureGCN 1.0 (2011−2020)GCN 4.0 (2016−2020)
GPU code namePitcairnBaffin
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date5 March 2012 (12 years ago)13 October 2017 (7 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$349 no data

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 cores1280640
Core clock speed1000 MHz1019 MHz
Boost clock speedno data1071 MHz
Number of transistors2,800 million3,000 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm14 nm
Power consumption (TDP)175 Watt60 Watt
Texture fill rate80.0042.84
Floating-point processing power2.56 TFLOPS1.371 TFLOPS
ROPs3216
TMUs8040

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 x8
Length241 mm145 mm
Width2-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pinNone

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 GB2 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed1200 MHz1500 MHz
Memory bandwidth153.6 GB/s96 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, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
Eyefinity+-
HDMI++

API compatibility

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

DirectX12 (11_1)12 (12_0)
Shader Model5.16.4
OpenGL4.64.6
OpenCL1.22.0
Vulkan1.2.1311.2.131

Pros & cons summary


Recency 5 March 2012 13 October 2017
Chip lithography 28 nm 14 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 175 Watt 60 Watt

RX 550 640SP has an age advantage of 5 years, a 100% more advanced lithography process, and 191.7% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon RX 550 640SP. 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 RX 550 640SP
Radeon RX 550 640SP

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Community ratings

Here you can see the user ratings of the compared graphics cards, as well as rate them yourself.


3.7 641 vote

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Questions & comments

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