Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 7870		6230 points
Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
	Difference: 410 (7%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 6990		24 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (50%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6990 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be quite a bit (about 99%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79360 (99%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21120 (66%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.