GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (344%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should be 1150% quicker than the GeForce 8500 GT in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be much (more or less 1856%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66800 (1856%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (about 1322%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23800 (1322%)

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 (counted 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 its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.