Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 380X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 970 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1425 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 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 R9 380X		9519 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 6049 (174%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 380X should be 4% faster than the Radeon HD 6970 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X will be quite a bit (more or less 47%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39680 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380X is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2880 (10%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.