Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380X, which has core clock speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 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 380X		9519 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 6649 (232%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 380X should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X should be much (approximately 146%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73760 (146%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380X is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2240 (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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can 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 colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.