Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which has core clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs 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 HD 6970		3470 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 600 (21%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (31%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (more or less 68%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34080 (68%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the Radeon HD 6970, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 640 (2%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.