Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M275X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1125 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should theoretically be much better than the Radeon R9 M275X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88000 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (about 96%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 M275X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34400 (96%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is superior to the Radeon R9 M275X, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (78%)

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 moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.