Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2560 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 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 390 8G		12733 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 9263 (267%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390 8G, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 6970 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 208000 (118%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be a lot (more or less 89%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75520 (89%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be quite a bit (more or less 127%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6970, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35840 (127%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.