Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 2920 (84%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6970 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a small bit (more or less 5%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4320 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a small bit (about 5%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6970, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1440 (5%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.