Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 45% faster than the Radeon HD 6970 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (45%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (about 175%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 147520 (175%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (approximately 230%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6970, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 64640 (230%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.