Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features GPU core speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 SPUs, 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 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 2920 (84%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be 9% quicker than the Radeon HD 6970 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a little bit (about 5%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4320 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 6970, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1440 (5%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock 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 memory bandwidth, the faster 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.