GeForce GTX 1060 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 9489 (331%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060		120 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1060 is 46% quicker than the Radeon HD 6870 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 62208 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 will be quite a bit (about 139%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70080 (139%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 is superior to the Radeon HD 6870, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43488 (151%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.