GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 148 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is 533% faster than the GeForce GT 315 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 134720 (533%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 604%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60400 (604%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a lot (about 412%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 315, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20600 (412%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 this number, 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.