GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (127%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (about 49%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23168 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be much (about 117%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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