Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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 270		5943 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 2703 (83%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270 should in theory be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 6950 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be just a bit (more or less 2%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be a little bit (more or less 13%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6950, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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.