GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 superior to the GeForce GT 315 overall. (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 much (approximately 604%) more effective at 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

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (more or less 412%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 315, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.