Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which features core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (approximately 55%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38400 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is just a bit (approximately 6%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.