Radeon HD 5570 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 157 Watts (365%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5570 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (approximately 442%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5570. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57400 (442%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a lot (about 392%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5570, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (392%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.