Radeon R9 295X2 vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which has a clock frequency of 1925 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It is made up of 5120 SPUs, 320 TAUs, and 128 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		335 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 165 Watts (49%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 295X2, in theory, should be just a bit faster than the Radeon RX 6950 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6950 XT		589824 MB/sec
	Difference: 50176 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT should be a lot (more or less 72%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 295X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		616000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 257664 (72%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6950 XT is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		246400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 116096 (89%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.