GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 148 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GT 315 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 134720 (533%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a lot (about 604%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60400 (604%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (about 412%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 315, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20600 (412%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 per second.

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