Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be just a bit (about 4%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be just a bit (more or less 6%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.