Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB is quite a bit (more or less 27%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		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 perform equally good at at FSAA, and be able to handle 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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface 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 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill 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 potential to reach the maximum fill rate.