Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 3150 (97%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is much (about 26%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 6950, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		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 moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.