Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 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 7870		6230 points
Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
	Difference: 410 (7%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 6990		24 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (50%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 will be 108% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is a lot (approximately 99%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79360 (99%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be much (approximately 66%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21120 (66%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.