Compare any two graphics cards:

Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

The Radeon HD 6970 comes with a GPU clock speed of 880 MHz, and the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM runs at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. ATi has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 6970 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot (approximately 40%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33920 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a little bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6970, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1440 (5%)

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

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

Other US-based stores

Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Other US-based stores

Specifications

Model	Radeon HD 6970	Radeon HD 7970
Manufacturer	ATi	ATi
Year	December 2010	January 2012
Code Name	Cayman XT	Tahiti XT
Fab Process	40 nm	28 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Memory	2048 MB	3072 MB
Core Speed	880 MHz	925 MHz
Shader Speed	N/A MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1375 MHz (5500 MHz effective)	1375 MHz (5500 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders	1536	2048
Texture Mapping Units	96	128
Render Output Units	32	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	384-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 4.2
Power (Max TDP)	250 watts	250 watts
Shader Model	5.0	5.0
Bandwidth	176000 MB/sec	264000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	84480 Mtexels/sec	118400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	28160 Mpixels/sec	29600 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.