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Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

The Radeon HD 6870 has a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM is set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which features a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB will be 79% quicker than the Radeon HD 6870 overall, due to its higher data rate. (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 much (more or less 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max 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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