Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Geforce GTX 670 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 should be much (approximately 46%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32080 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 670 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3680 (14%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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