Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 285, which comes with a clock frequency of 918 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 R9 285		8500 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 5260 (162%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 285 should be 10% faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 should be much (about 46%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32416 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be just a bit (more or less 15%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3776 (15%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.