GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. 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 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (186%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (194%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (approximately 300%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (300%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (482%)

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 transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 graphics card can possibly write 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.