GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 is 40% quicker than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (40%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (approximately 55%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38800 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (about 163%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (163%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.