Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a bit (more or less 4%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a small bit (about 6%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.