GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 36 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be a bit better than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 18304 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (about 46%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22240 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6336 (33%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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