Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 380X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1425 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 R9 380X		9519 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 6279 (194%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 380X should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X should be a lot (approximately 76%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53760 (76%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.