GeForce GTX 1060 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with core speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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 1060		12359 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 8889 (256%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060		120 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1060 should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6970 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 20608 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 is much (about 43%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36000 (43%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 is superior to the Radeon HD 6970, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44128 (157%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.