GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (about 91%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33536 (91%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.