Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M295X, which comes with GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M295X should theoretically be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X will be much (more or less 36%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is superior to the Radeon R9 M295X, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (7%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.