Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (more or less 57%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (57%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a lot (approximately 100%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5830, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (100%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.