Radeon R9 295X2 vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1925 MHz, and 16384 MB of GDDR6 RAM running at 2250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 5120 Stream Processors, 320 TAUs, and 128 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		335 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 165 Watts (49%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 295X2 should be 9% faster than the Radeon RX 6950 XT overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6950 XT		589824 MB/sec
	Difference: 50176 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT should be quite a bit (approximately 72%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 295X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		616000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 257664 (72%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT is quite a bit (approximately 89%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 295X2, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		246400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 116096 (89%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.