Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up 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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 3520 (123%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a lot (more or less 76%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38400 (76%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 6870, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (3%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.