Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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 7950		7731 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 4261 (123%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7950 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6970 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is a little bit (approximately 6%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5120 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the Radeon HD 7950, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2560 (10%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.