Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which has core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs 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 280X		8886 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 5646 (174%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X is 80% faster than the Radeon HD 6950 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is much (about 55%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be just a bit (about 6%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6950, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of 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 also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.