Radeon HD 5670 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7970, which has a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 189 Watts (310%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5670 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 200000 (313%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a lot (more or less 664%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 102900 (664%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be much (approximately 377%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5670, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23400 (377%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill 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.