Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 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 390X 8G		13555 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 10085 (291%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390X 8G, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 208000 (118%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is quite a bit (approximately 119%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100320 (119%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G should be much (about 139%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6970, and able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39040 (139%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.