Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, 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 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 should in theory perform just a 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%) faster with regards to 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

The Radeon R9 270X is a small bit (more or less 14%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6970, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.