Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1425 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380X should in theory be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X should be a lot (approximately 76%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53760 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X should be quite a bit (about 21%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (21%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.