Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, 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 7870		6230 points
Radeon HD 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 4080 (190%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (more or less 138%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46400 (138%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (approximately 138%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18560 (138%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.