Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

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 390 8G		12733 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 9863 (344%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 390 8G should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 249600 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be much (more or less 217%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109600 (217%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (122%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.