GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GTX 965M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be just a bit (about 17%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 965M. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9984 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 965M is the winner, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4608 (18%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per 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 better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.