Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 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 R9 290		9876 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 6406 (185%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (82%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (approximately 52%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43520 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (more or less 82%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6970, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23040 (82%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling 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 can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.