Radeon HD 6770 1GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 142 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
	Difference: 196800 (293%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (more or less 229%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82400 (229%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (about 106%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (106%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.