Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1425 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 380X		9519 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 6049 (174%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380X should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 6970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X will be much (approximately 47%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39680 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380X is superior to the Radeon HD 6970, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2880 (10%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.