Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (approximately 230%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 161600 (230%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 67200 (263%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.