Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7950, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be much (more or less 27%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (27%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel fill rate, so in theory they should be equally good at at AA, and be capable of handling the same resolutions. (explain)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.