Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7990, which has GPU core speed of 950 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 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 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7990 is 260% faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 416000 (260%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be much (approximately 245%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 172800 (245%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7990 is superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (138%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.