GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		12185 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 8715 (251%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is 12% faster than the Radeon HD 6970 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 20608 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be much (more or less 28%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23952 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44128 (157%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.