Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950, which features a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (about 700%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61600 (700%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (about 482%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (482%)

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 moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.