Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 will be 5% faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a little bit (about 13%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.