Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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 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

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

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a lot (approximately 55%) faster with regards to 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, though not by far. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.