Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R7 370 4G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 370 4G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 975 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1400 MHz on this model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 370 4G		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 370 4G should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 370 4G is much (approximately 24%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		62400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (24%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 370 4G should be just a bit (approximately 8%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6870, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		31200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.