GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which has GPU clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 295 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6970 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 47776 (27%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be just a bit (approximately 9%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7680 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is superior to the Radeon HD 6970, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4096 (15%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 ability to reach the max fill rate.