GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (127%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (more or less 49%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23168 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (about 117%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13792 (117%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.