Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 825 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon R7 M260X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is quite a bit (approximately 256%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50600 (256%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (about 288%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R7 M260X, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19000 (288%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.