GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which features clock 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 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 should be 43% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 48112 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (about 70%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28928 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (more or less 59%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9472 (59%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.