Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which comes with core speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M385X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is just a bit (approximately 14%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 M385X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is superior to the Radeon R9 M385X, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (45%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.