Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M390X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is much (approximately 31%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22144 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2464 (11%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.