Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7770, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1125 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be much faster than the Radeon HD 7770 overall. (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 anisotropic 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

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot (approximately 60%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 7770, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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