Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1050 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (90%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (approximately 360%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 181600 (360%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (approximately 222%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6870, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 64000 (222%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.