Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 49 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (more or less 35%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18200 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a small bit (more or less 10%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.