Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which features core clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 96% faster than the Radeon HD 6790 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (approximately 252%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (approximately 120%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6790, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.