Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should be 4% faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a little bit (about 4%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.