Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7850, which features a core clock frequency of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 1960 (60%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 7850 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (approximately 28%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a small bit (approximately 8%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1920 (8%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.