Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which has a core clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, 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 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (about 48%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34096 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4256 (17%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.