GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB comes with a core clock frequency of 648 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1242 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 240 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has core 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 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 285 2GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 6950 2GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 285 2GB	Radeon HD 6950 2GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	January 15, 2009	December 2010
Code Name	G200b	Cayman Pro
Fab Process	55 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16
Memory	2048 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	648 MHz	800 MHz
Shader Speed	1476 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1242 MHz	1250 MHz
Unified Shaders	240	1408
Texture Mapping Units	80	88
Render Output Units	32	32
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	512-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 4.1
Power (Max TDP)	204 watts	200 watts
Shader Model	4.0	5.0
Bandwidth	158976 MB/sec	160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	51840 Mtexels/sec	70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	20736 Mpixels/sec	25600 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.