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Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The Radeon HD 5970 has clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600 SPUs along with 160 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870 151 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 143 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870 134400 MB/sec
Difference: 121600 (90%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (about 360%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870 50400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 181600 (360%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (about 222%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6870, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870 28800 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 64000 (222%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5970 Radeon HD 6870
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year November 2009 October 2010
Code Name Hemlock XT Barts XT
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 1024 MB
Core Speed 725 MHz (x2) 900 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz (x2) 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 294 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 256000 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 232000 Mtexels/sec 50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 92800 Mpixels/sec 28800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600 (x2) 1120
Texture Mapping Units 160 (x2) 56
Render Output Units 64 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 2154 million 1700 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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