Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M295X, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M295X should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X is much (about 36%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a small bit (more or less 7%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 M295X, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (7%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.