Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this specific card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 R9 270X		6590 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 3350 (103%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a small bit (more or less 14%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (25%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.