Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R7 370 4G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 370 4G, which comes with GPU clock speed of 975 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 370 4G		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 370 4G will be 2% quicker than the Radeon HD 6970 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (about 35%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 370 4G. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 370 4G		62400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22080 (35%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 370 4G is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		31200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3040 (11%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.