GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which features GPU clock 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 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 275 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 32992 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (approximately 39%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19760 (39%)

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 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7876 (44%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.