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Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 175 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB 200 Watts
Difference: 25 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB 160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a bit (more or less 14%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB 70400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 9600 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (about 25%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB 25600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 6400 (25%)

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 6950 2GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7870

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 6950 2GB Radeon HD 7870
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year December 2010 March 2012
Code Name Cayman Pro Pitcairn XT
Memory 2048 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 800 MHz 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 5000 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 200 watts 175 watts
Bandwidth 160000 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 70400 Mtexels/sec 80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 25600 Mpixels/sec 32000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1408 1280
Texture Mapping Units 88 80
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2640 million 2800 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7870

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

One Response to “Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7870”
Mshenay says:

With the 7870s OC abilities it does surpass the 6950 by large margins, granted it has less TPU and SPUs but it can clock to 1250 mhz mem and 1200+ Core Clocks. I got a 7870 as an upgrade to my 6950, and I'm happy :3

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