Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs 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 is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 5355 (187%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 96% faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 129600 (96%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (approximately 135%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68000 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be just a bit (approximately 3%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6870, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (3%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.