Radeon HD 5570 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 207 Watts (481%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 will be 511% faster than the Radeon HD 5570 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (511%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (approximately 550%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5570. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71480 (550%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the Radeon HD 5570, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22960 (442%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.