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Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

The Radeon HD 6870 features a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870 151 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB 200 Watts
Difference: 49 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be 79% faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB 240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870 134400 MB/sec
Difference: 105600 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be quite a bit (approximately 78%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB 89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870 50400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 39200 (78%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a small bit (more or less 13%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB 25600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 3200 (13%)

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 6870

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7950 3GB

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 6870 Radeon HD 7950 3GB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year October 2010 January 2012
Code Name Barts XT Tahiti Pro
Memory 1024 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 900 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 4200 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 151 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 134400 MB/sec 240000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 50400 Mtexels/sec 89600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 28800 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1120 1792
Texture Mapping Units 56 112
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 1700 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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 6870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7950 3GB

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

One Response to “Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB”
Radeon 6870 vs 7950 3 gb says:

[...] 6870 vs 7950 3 gb I am confused over this benchmark. Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare This claims that while the 7950 is faster than 6870 at bandwith and texel rate, the pixel rate ( [...]

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