Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 7870		6230 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 2990 (92%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a little bit (more or less 14%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type 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 better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.