Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R7 370 4G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 370 4G, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 975 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 370 4G		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 370 4G should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a bit (approximately 13%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 370 4G. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 370 4G		62400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 370 4G is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		31200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (22%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.