Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R6 Kaveri

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 7870 XT and Radeon R6 Kaveri, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Radeon HD 7870 XT stacks up against Radeon R6 Kaveri, check out specs charts below.

Radeon R6 Kaveri is a Laptop Graphics Card

Note: Radeon R6 Kaveri is only used in laptop graphics. It has lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with Radeon R6 Kaveri here:

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 7870 XT Radeon R6 Kaveri
Power consumption (TDP) 185 Watt
Interface PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 2x 6-pin
Memory type GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB
Display Connectors 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 7870 XT is used in Desktops, and Radeon R6 Kaveri - in Laptops.
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT is build with GCN 1.0 architecture, and Radeon R6 Kaveri - with GCN 1.1.
  • Core clock speed of Radeon HD 7870 XT is 392 MHz higher, than Radeon R6 Kaveri.
  • Radeon HD 7870 XT and Radeon R6 Kaveri are manufactured by 28 nm process technology.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 35−40 0−1
ultra / 1080p 21−24
QHD / 1440p 16−18 0−1
4K / 2160p 10−11
low / 720p 60−65 1−2
medium / 1080p 40−45 0−1
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 7870 XT in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 6100% more, than Radeon R6 Kaveri.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 7870 XT Radeon R6 Kaveri
Architecture GCN 1.0 GCN 1.1
Code name Tahiti Kaveri
Type Desktop Laptop
Release date 19 November 2012 4 June 2014
Pipelines 1536 384
Core clock speed 925 MHz 533 MHz
Boost Clock 975 MHz 654 MHz
Transistor count 4,313 million 2410 Million
Manufacturing process technology 28 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 93.60
Floating-point performance 2,995 gflops
Length 267 mm
Memory bus width 256 Bit 64/128 Bit
Memory clock speed 6000 MHz
Memory bandwidth 192.0 GB/s
Shared memory +
DirectX 12 (11_1) DirectX 12 (FL 12_0), Shader 5.0
Shader Model 5.1
OpenGL 4.6
OpenCL 1.2
Vulkan 1.2.131
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 346 Mh/s
Laptop size medium sized
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 14.5 Mh/s
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