GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs 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 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 136 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be 100% quicker than the GeForce GTX 650 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be much (approximately 108%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36544 (108%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (more or less 51%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 650, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8672 (51%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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.