GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		350 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 6970 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		934298 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 758298 (431%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB will be a lot (about 318%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		352800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 268320 (318%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB is quite a bit (more or less 401%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6970, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		141120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 112960 (401%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.