GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses 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

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be 150% quicker than the GeForce GTX 965M overall, because of its higher data rate. (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 a bit (more or less 17%) better at anisotropic 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

The GeForce GTX 965M is a small bit (approximately 18%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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