Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 380

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 6970 and Radeon R9 380, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Radeon HD 6970 stacks up against Radeon R9 380, check out specs charts below.

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 6970 Radeon R9 380
Power consumption (TDP) 550 Watt 190 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin 2 x 6-pin
Memory type DDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 4 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 6970 has 189% more power consumption, than Radeon R9 380.
  • Radeon HD 6970 is connected by PCIe 2.0 x16, and Radeon R9 380 uses PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
  • Radeon R9 380 has 2 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 6970.
  • Both cards are used in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 6970 is build with Terascale 2 architecture, and Radeon R9 380 - with GCN.
  • Radeon HD 6970 is manufactured by 40 nm process technology, and Radeon R9 380 - by 28 nm process technology.
  • Radeon HD 6970 is 46 mm longer, than Radeon R9 380.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 6970 is 405 MHz higher, than Radeon R9 380.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 14−16 35−40
ultra / 1080p 9−10 21−24
QHD / 1440p 3−4 16−18
4K / 2160p 10−11
low / 720p 30−35 60−65
medium / 1080p 18−20 40−45
The average gaming FPS of Radeon R9 380 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 140% more, than Radeon HD 6970.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 6970 Radeon R9 380
Architecture Terascale 2 GCN
Code name Cayman Tonga Pro
Type Desktop Desktop
Release date 14 December 2010 26 June 2015
Pipelines 1536 1792
Boost Clock 880 MHz 970 MHz
Transistor count 2,640 million 5,000 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 84.48 108.6
Floating-point performance 2,703.4 gflops 3,476 gflops
Length 267 mm 221 mm
Memory bus width 256 Bit 256 Bit
Memory clock speed 1375 MHz 970 MHz
Memory bandwidth 182.4 GB/s
Shared memory -
Shader Model 5.0 6.3
OpenGL 4.4 4.5
OpenCL 1.2 2.0
Vulkan +
Monero / XMR (CryptoNight) 0.48 kh/s
FreeSync +
Bus support PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0
HDMI + +
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 273 Mh/s 404 Mh/s
Eyefinity + +
HD3D +
PowerTune +
TrueAudio +
ZeroCore +
Mantle +
Design reference reference
Bridgeless CrossFire +
Number of Eyefinity displays 6
DisplayPort support +
CrossFire + +
VCE +
DDMA audio +
Decred / DCR (Decred) 0.66 Gh/s
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 18 Mh/s
Zcash / ZEC (Equihash) 168.45 Sol/s
Compute units 28
Form factor full height / full length / dual slot
High bandwidth memory (HBM) -
LiquidVR +
FRTC +
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