Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 3360 (117%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is much (approximately 59%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (59%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.