Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is quite a bit (approximately 26%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a little bit (about 16%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (16%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.