Compare any two graphics cards:
VS

Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

The Radeon HD 6950 makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 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 XT 6390 points
Radeon HD 6950 3240 points
Difference: 3150 (97%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT 185 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 200 Watts
Difference: 15 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Radeon HD 7870 XT 192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 160000 MB/sec
Difference: 32000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is quite a bit (approximately 26%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT 88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 70400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 18400 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a small bit (approximately 16%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT 29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 25600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 4000 (16%)

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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7870 XT

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.

Specifications

Display Specifications

Hide Specifications

Model Radeon HD 6950 Radeon HD 7870 XT
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year December 2010 November 2012
Code Name Cayman Pro Tahiti LE
Memory 1024 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 800 MHz 925 MHz
Memory Speed 5000 MHz 6000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 200 watts 185 watts
Bandwidth 160000 MB/sec 192000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 70400 Mtexels/sec 88800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 25600 Mpixels/sec 29600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1408 1536
Texture Mapping Units 88 96
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2640 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7870 XT

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

Be the first to leave a comment!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*

WordPress Anti Spam by WP-SpamShield