GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, 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

GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 10682 (372%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 will be 67% quicker than the Radeon HD 6870 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be much (more or less 186%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 93728 (186%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be quite a bit (approximately 150%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6870, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43264 (150%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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