Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which has GPU clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, 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

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon HD 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 6075 (283%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 6790 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 129600 (96%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (about 252%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84800 (252%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (more or less 120%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6790, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16160 (120%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across 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 memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.