Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which has a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 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 R9 270X		6590 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 3120 (90%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 270X should theoretically be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 6970 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a bit (approximately 6%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4480 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be just a bit (approximately 14%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6970, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (14%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.