Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, 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 7870		6230 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 2760 (80%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 is 15% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a bit (about 6%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4480 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a little bit (about 14%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6970, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (14%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.