GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (more or less 552%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59600 (552%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20200 (374%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.