Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7990, which features a GPU core clock speed of 950 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 Stream Processors, 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 7990		15520 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 12650 (441%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 224 Watts (148%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7990 is 329% faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 441600 (329%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is a lot (about 383%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 192800 (383%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7990 is superior to the Radeon HD 6870, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (111%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.