Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon R9 290X

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 6950 and Radeon R9 290X, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Radeon HD 6950 stacks up against Radeon R9 290X, check out specs charts below.

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 6950 Radeon R9 290X
Power consumption (TDP) 500 Watt 250 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 2x 6-pin 1 x 6-pin + 1 x 8-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 4 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 6950 has 100% more power consumption, than Radeon R9 290X.
  • Radeon HD 6950 is connected by PCIe 2.0 x16, and Radeon R9 290X uses PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
  • Radeon R9 290X has 2 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 6950.
  • Both cards are used in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 6950 is build with TeraScale 3 architecture, and Radeon R9 290X - with GCN.
  • Radeon HD 6950 is manufactured by 40 nm process technology, and Radeon R9 290X - by 28 nm process technology.
  • Radeon R9 290X is 8 mm longer, than Radeon HD 6950.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 6950 and Radeon R9 290X is 1250 MHz.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 14−16 35−40
ultra / 1080p 8−9 24−27
QHD / 1440p 3−4 18−20
4K / 2160p 10−11
low / 720p 27−30 60−65
medium / 1080p 16−18 45−50
The average gaming FPS of Radeon R9 290X in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 171% more, than Radeon HD 6950.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 6950 Radeon R9 290X
Architecture TeraScale 3 GCN
Code name Cayman Hawaii XT
Type Desktop Desktop
Release date 14 December 2010 24 October 2013
Pipelines 1408 2816
Boost Clock 800 MHz 947 MHz
Transistor count 2,640 million 6,200 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 70.40 176.0
Floating-point performance 2,252.8 gflops 5,632 gflops
Length 267 mm 275 mm
Memory bus width 256 Bit 512 Bit
Memory clock speed 1250 MHz 1250 MHz
Memory bandwidth 320 GB/s
Shared memory -
Shader Model 5.0 6.3
OpenGL 4.4 4.6
OpenCL 1.2 2.0
Vulkan +
Monero / XMR (CryptoNight) 0.76 kh/s
FreeSync +
Bus support PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0
HDMI + +
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 244 Mh/s 623 Mh/s
Eyefinity + +
HD3D +
TrueAudio +
Design reference reference
DisplayPort support +
CrossFire + +
DDMA audio +
Decred / DCR (Decred) 1.07 Gh/s
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 25.75 Mh/s
Zcash / ZEC (Equihash) 350 Sol/s
AppAcceleration +
LiquidVR +
TressFX +
UVD +
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