Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7790, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (135%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7790 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be much (approximately 26%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7790. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (26%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is superior to the Radeon HD 7790, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card 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 amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.