GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 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 GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 148 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 315 in general. (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 a lot (approximately 604%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is superior to the GeForce GT 315, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.