Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which features a clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed 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 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380 4G should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G will be quite a bit (more or less 54%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38240 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G should be much (approximately 21%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.