Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features a clock speed of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 380 2G should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is a lot (about 54%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38240 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 2G is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (21%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.