GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 1024 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (more or less 36%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18560 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4864 (23%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range 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 calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.