Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a lot (approximately 82%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57600 (82%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (100%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.