Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which comes with GPU core speed of 1050 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 10685 (372%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390X 8G will be 186% quicker than the Radeon HD 6870 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 249600 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G should be quite a bit (more or less 267%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 134400 (267%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390X 8G is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 38400 (133%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.