Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features GPU clock speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 XT		6390 points
Radeon HD 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 4240 (197%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6790 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be much (approximately 164%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55200 (164%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a lot (more or less 120%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.