Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1425 MHz on this specific model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units 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 380 2G		8850 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 5610 (173%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380 2G should in theory be a little bit superior to the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G should be a lot (about 54%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38240 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G will be quite a bit (approximately 21%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6950, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (21%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.