Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which has clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 7006 (244%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 149 Watts (99%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 is 138% faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (138%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (more or less 154%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 77600 (154%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (78%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.