Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1375 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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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 HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 4985 (154%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 104000 (65%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (more or less 68%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48000 (68%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is superior to the Radeon HD 6950, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (16%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.