Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which has GPU core speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon HD 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 6075 (283%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 6790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 129600 (96%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (approximately 252%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84800 (252%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is superior to the Radeon HD 6790, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16160 (120%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.