GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which has GPU clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon HD 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 8717 (405%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 970 is 67% faster than the Radeon HD 6790 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (approximately 225%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75600 (225%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (more or less 400%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 53760 (400%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.