Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950, which comes with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 should in theory be much 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 will be much (about 27%) faster with regards to texture filtering 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 rate, so in theory they should be equally good at at anti-aliasing, 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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.