Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which comes with a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (74%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (54%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be just a bit (more or less 14%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (14%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (45%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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