Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 2990 (92%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a bit (approximately 14%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (25%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.