GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (186%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (194%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (more or less 300%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (300%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (approximately 482%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (482%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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