Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which has a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M295X, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X is a lot (more or less 36%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (7%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.