Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5870 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a little bit (approximately 4%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be just a bit (more or less 6%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.