Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 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 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 will be 9% quicker than the Radeon HD 6970 overall, due to 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 small bit (more or less 5%) faster with regards to texture 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

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a small bit (about 5%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6970, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 maximum amount of 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.