Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 will be 20% quicker than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be much (more or less 83%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, by far. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.