GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 SPUs, 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
GeForce GTX 470		2937 points
	Difference: 533 (18%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 470 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 42080 (31%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (more or less 149%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50488 (149%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a bit (more or less 16%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 470, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3880 (16%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.