GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 10312 (318%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (40%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (approximately 105%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73728 (105%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is superior to the Radeon HD 6950, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46464 (182%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one 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 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 can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.