GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, 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 590		6680 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 3210 (93%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 should be 87% quicker than the Radeon HD 6970 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 152320 (87%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be just a bit (approximately 9%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6784 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30112 (107%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.