Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 theoretically be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6970 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a small bit (approximately 5%) more effective at AF 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 (more or less 5%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6970, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.