Radeon HD 5670 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (148%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5670 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (110%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (about 225%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34900 (225%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (about 365%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5670, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22600 (365%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.