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Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

The Radeon HD 6870 makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1050 MHz on this specific card. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870 151 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB 200 Watts
Difference: 49 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is 19% faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB 160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870 134400 MB/sec
Difference: 25600 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be much (about 40%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB 70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870 50400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 20000 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB 25600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 3200 (13%)

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

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Radeon HD 6870

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 6870 Radeon HD 6950 2GB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year October 2010 December 2010
Code Name Barts XT Cayman Pro
Memory 1024 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 900 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 4200 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 151 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 134400 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 50400 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 28800 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1120 1408
Texture Mapping Units 56 88
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 1700 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 6870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

2 Responses to “Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB”
Anonymous says:

[...] Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare Ansich ist sie etwa 5-10% besser (die 6950). Aber du wirst den Unterschied nicht sehen weil du mit [...]

Buying : Graphic Card Someone Please Sell Me a Radeon for Under 10K :( - Page 2 says:

[...] 6950 is better ofcourse.. but just marginally. Here's a real comparisson.. 6870 1gb Vs 6950 2gb : Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare the 6950 seems to be appox 10% better for appox 25% more in price In Aliens Vs Predator.. it's [...]

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