Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R7 370 4G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 370 4G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 975 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this specific model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 370 4G		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 370 4G should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a bit (more or less 13%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 370 4G. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 370 4G		62400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 370 4G will be quite a bit (about 22%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		31200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (22%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.