Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6770, which features a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6770		108 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 186 Watts (172%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6770 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6770		67200 MB/sec
	Difference: 188800 (281%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (about 544%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6770. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6770		36000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 196000 (544%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is superior to the Radeon HD 6770, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6770		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 78400 (544%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.