Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which has clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The Radeon R9 270X, in theory, should perform a bit faster 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 should be a small bit (about 6%) faster with regards to 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

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, though only just barely. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.