Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 285, which has a core clock speed of 918 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 285 is 10% quicker than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be quite a bit (approximately 46%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32416 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be a small bit (approximately 15%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3776 (15%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip 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 amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.