Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7790, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 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 7790		4330 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 1460 (51%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (78%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be just a bit (approximately 11%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the Radeon HD 7790, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (80%)

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

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.