Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which features GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X is 80% faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (approximately 55%) better at texture 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

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, though not by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.