GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be 127% quicker than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (127%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (more or less 49%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23168 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (more or less 117%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13792 (117%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 applied 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 the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.