GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		12185 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 8715 (251%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB will be 12% faster than the Radeon HD 6970 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 20608 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is much (about 28%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23952 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be a lot (approximately 157%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6970, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44128 (157%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per 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 number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.