GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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 960		7627 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 4157 (120%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (57%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be just a bit (more or less 17%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12352 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be quite a bit (approximately 28%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6970, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7904 (28%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.