Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 285, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 918 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 285		8500 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 5260 (162%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 285 should in theory be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be quite a bit (approximately 46%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32416 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 should be just a bit (more or less 15%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6950, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3776 (15%)

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 past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.