Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features a clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, 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 380 2G		8850 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 5380 (155%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380 2G should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is much (more or less 29%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24160 (29%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G will be a bit (approximately 10%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6970, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2880 (10%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the 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 - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.