Radeon HD 5670 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (146%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 5670 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (110%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a lot (about 117%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18100 (117%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be much (more or less 117%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5670, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7240 (117%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.