Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs 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 R9 270X		6590 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 3350 (103%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a small bit (approximately 14%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is superior to the Radeon HD 6950, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 output 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 get to the maximum fill rate.