Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 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 HD 7870 XT		6390 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 3150 (97%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a lot (about 26%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a bit (approximately 16%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6950, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (16%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per 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. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.