Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 680 should in theory be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32256 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be much (about 83%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58368 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be much (approximately 26%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6592 (26%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range 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 worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.