Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7950 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to 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 a lot (approximately 27%) faster with regards to 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 rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at full screen anti-aliasing, and be capable of handling the same screen 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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.