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Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

The Radeon HD 6970 has core speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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 6970 3470 points
Difference: 4755 (137%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970 should in theory perform quite a bit faster 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 much (approximately 40%) more effective at AF 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 just a bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6970, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (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

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Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 6970 Radeon HD 7970
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year December 2010 January 2012
Code Name Cayman XT Tahiti XT
Memory 2048 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 880 MHz 925 MHz
Memory Speed 5500 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 176000 MB/sec 264000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 84480 Mtexels/sec 118400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 28160 Mpixels/sec 29600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1536 2048
Texture Mapping Units 96 128
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2640 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

4 Responses to “Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 7970”
timmeh says:

lol guys, get a 6970, its a lot cheaper

Some Dude says:

Do want! But still, then I have to invest in a new Mobo, and then it would be about double the price of a 6990

6990 > 7970

vlcrpt[0]r says:

2x 6970 > 6990 > 7970

But they are so loud :S

LunaticGTX says:

get 7970 and replace the cooler with arctic cooler 7970
cheaper than plus 2 or extreme

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