Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 970 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1425 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380X should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X is quite a bit (more or less 76%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53760 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X will be quite a bit (approximately 21%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (21%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record 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 clock speed. 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.