AMD Radeon HD 6950: specs and benchmarks

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Summary

AMD started Radeon HD 6950 sales 14 December 2010 at a recommended price of $299 . This is a desktop graphics card based on a TeraScale 3 architecture and made with 40 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamer market. 2 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1.25 GHz are supplied, and together with 256 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of .

Compatibility-wise, this is dual-slot card attached via PCIe 2.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 267 mm. Two 6-pin power connectors are required, and power consumption is at 500 Watt.

It provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at 6.75% of a leader's which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.

RTX 4090GeForce RTX4090
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General info

Some basic facts about Radeon HD 6950: architecture, market segment, release date etc.

Place in performance ranking524
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Value for money0.52
ArchitectureTeraScale 3 (2010−2013)
GPU code nameCayman
Market segmentDesktop
Designreference
Release date14 December 2010 (13 years old)
Launch price (MSRP)$299
Current price$320 (1.1x MSRP)of 168889 (A100 PCIe 80 GB)
Value for money

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Technical specs

Radeon HD 6950's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon HD 6950's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.

Pipelines / CUDA cores1408of 20480 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT)
Boost clock speed800 MHzof 3599 (Radeon RX 7990 XTX)
Number of transistors2,640 millionof 14400 (GeForce GTX 1070 SLI Mobile)
Manufacturing process technology40 nmof 4 (GeForce RTX 4080)
Power consumption (TDP)500 Wattof 2400 (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem)
Texture fill rate70.40of 969.9 (H100 SXM5 96 GB)
Floating-point performance2,252.8 gflopsof 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo)

Size and compatibility

This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon HD 6950 and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).

Bus supportPCIe 2.0 x16
InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16
Length267 mm
Width2-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pin

Memory

Parameters of memory installed on Radeon HD 6950: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.

Memory typeGDDR5
Maximum RAM amount2 GBof 192 (Radeon Instinct MI300X)
Memory bus width256 Bitof 19000 (GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB)
Memory clock speed1250 MHzof 23000 (GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER)

Video outputs and ports

Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 6950. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.

Display Connectors2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Eyefinity1
HDMI+
DisplayPort support-

Technologies

Technological solutions and APIs supported by Radeon HD 6950. You'll probably need this information if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

AppAcceleration-
CrossFire1
Enduro-
HD3D-
PowerTune-
TrueAudio-
ZeroCore-

API support

APIs supported by Radeon HD 6950, sometimes including their particular versions.

DirectXDirectX® 11
Shader Model5.0
OpenGL4.4of 4.6 (GeForce RTX 4090)
OpenCL1.2
Mantle-

Benchmark performance

Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon HD 6950. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

HD 6950 6.75

Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.

Benchmark coverage: 25%

HD 6950 2614

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics

Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests displaying a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.

Benchmark coverage: 14%

HD 6950 3230

Unigine Heaven 4.0

This is an old DirectX 11 benchmark, a newer version of Unigine 3.0 with relatively small differences. It displays a fantasy medieval town sprawling over several flying islands. The benchmark is still sometimes used, despite its significant age, as it was released back in 2013.

Benchmark coverage: 1%

HD 6950 442

Gaming performance

Let's see how good Radeon HD 6950 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.

Relative perfomance

Radeon HD 6950's performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop video cards.


NVIDIA equivalent

According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon HD 6950 is GeForce GTX 950A, which is nearly equal in speed and lower by 2 positions in our ranking.

GTX 950AGeForce GTX950A
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Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon HD 6950:

Similar GPUs

Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

GTX 780M Mac EditionGeForce GTX780M Mac Edition
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GTX 465GeForce GTX465
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HD 6850 X2Radeon HD6850 X2
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FireStream 9370FireStream9370
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GTX 650 TiGeForce GTX650 Ti
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GTX 570 Rev. 2GeForce GTX570 Rev. 2
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Recommended processors

These processors are most commonly used with Radeon HD 6950 according to our statistics.

User ratings: view and submit

Here you can see the user rating of the graphics card, as well as rate it yourself.


3.8 200 votes

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Questions and comments

Here you can ask a question about Radeon HD 6950, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.