GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 36 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be 13% faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 18304 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is much (approximately 46%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22240 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is much (about 33%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6336 (33%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.