Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 R9 270X		6590 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 3120 (90%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a little bit (about 6%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4480 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.