Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M230, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 780 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

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 HD 6950		3240 points
Radeon R5 M230		1281 points
	Difference: 1959 (153%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R5 M230 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (approximately 351%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54800 (351%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22480 (721%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.