Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7770, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7770 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88000 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is quite a bit (about 76%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30400 (76%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is superior to the Radeon HD 7770, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (60%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.