GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which features GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running 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)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (approximately 49%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23040 (49%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13760 (116%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 get to the maximum fill rate.