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Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The Radeon HD 6790 comes with core speeds of 840 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Mafia 2

Settings: Medium Settings
AA: none
AF: 4x
Resolution: 1680x1050
Test Machine: Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)
Radeon HD 6870 98 FPS
Radeon HD 6790 84 FPS
Difference: 14 FPS (17%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790 150 Watts
Radeon HD 6870 151 Watts
Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (approximately 50%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790 33600 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 16800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be much (more or less 114%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790 13440 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 15360 (114%)

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

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page.

Radeon HD 6790

Amazon.com

Other US-based stores

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.de

Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 6870

Amazon.com

Other US-based stores

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.de

Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model Radeon HD 6790 Radeon HD 6870
Manufacturer ATi ATi
Year April 2011 October 2010
Code Name Barts LE Barts XT
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Bus PCIe 2.1 x16 PCIe x16
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 840 MHz 900 MHz
Shader Speed N/A MHz (N/A) MHz
Memory Speed 1050 MHz 1050 MHz
Unified Shaders 800 1120
Texture Mapping Units 40 56
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.1
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 151 watts
Shader Model 5.0 5.0
Bandwidth 134400 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 33600 Mtexels/sec 50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 13440 Mpixels/sec 28800 Mpixels/sec

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

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Comments

3 Responses to “Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon HD 6870”

[...] but the build I recomended has a much faster video card. For gaming the video card is paramount. Theoritical benchmark comparison between the 2 video cards based on specs The AMD 955 is still a heck of a [...]

[...] A graphics card that is two product cycles ahead (AMD Radeon 6870 vs the top end Mac option of the 6790); see here for a comparison of raw benchmarks from each card [...]

yoki says:

Dual-6790 or Single-6870??

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