Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon RX 560

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 560, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1175 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1750 MHz on this particular card. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 560		80 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 should be 53% faster than the Radeon RX 560 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 560		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 61312 (53%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be just a bit (about 12%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon RX 560. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 560		75200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9280 (12%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the Radeon RX 560, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 560		18800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9360 (50%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 output 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 max fill rate.