GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which uses a 40 nm design. ATi has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 285 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 1024 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a lot (approximately 36%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18560 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a lot (approximately 23%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4864 (23%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.