GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a core clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 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

GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 180 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 should be 1% quicker than the Radeon HD 6970 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (about 101%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42480 (101%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the Radeon HD 6970, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (19%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.