Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480, which has core speeds of 1120 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 480 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102144 (64%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be much (about 129%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 90880 (129%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 will be a lot (about 40%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (40%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.