Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which comes with GPU core speed of 723 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X is quite a bit (approximately 31%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22144 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a little bit (more or less 11%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M395X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2464 (11%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 maximum fill rate.