Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 270 should in theory be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be a bit (more or less 2%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a small bit (approximately 13%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.