Radeon HD 5670 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which features clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs 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 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 189 Watts (310%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be 175% faster than the Radeon HD 5670 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (175%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (approximately 445%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68980 (445%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (more or less 354%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5670, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21960 (354%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.