Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 will be 4% faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a small bit (more or less 4%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the Radeon HD 6950, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.