Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 470, which has a clock frequency of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1650 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 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 RX 470		11756 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 8286 (239%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 470 should be 20% quicker than the Radeon HD 6970 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 35200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 should be quite a bit (approximately 40%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34048 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 is a small bit (more or less 5%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6970, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1472 (5%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.