Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 690 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224512 (140%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 will be much (more or less 233%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 163840 (233%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be much (about 129%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32960 (129%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one 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. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.