Compare any two graphics cards:
VS

Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

The Radeon HD 5870 comes with core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which has GPU clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790 150 Watts
Radeon HD 5870 188 Watts
Difference: 38 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870, in theory, should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6790 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870 153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790 134400 MB/sec
Difference: 19200 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a lot (about 102%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870 68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790 33600 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 34400 (102%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the Radeon HD 6790, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870 27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790 13440 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 13760 (102%)

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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6790

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

Display Specifications

Hide Specifications

Model Radeon HD 5870 Radeon HD 6790
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year September 23, 2009 April 2011
Code Name Cypress XT Barts LE
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 850 MHz 840 MHz
Memory Speed 4800 MHz 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 188 watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 153600 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 68000 Mtexels/sec 33600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 27200 Mpixels/sec 13440 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600(320x5) 800
Texture Mapping Units 80 40
Render Output Units 32 16
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 2154 million 1700 million
Bus PCIe 2.1 x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.2 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6790

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.

Comments

Be the first to leave a comment!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*

WordPress Anti Spam by WP-SpamShield