GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a core clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 will be 358% quicker than the GeForce GT 230 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (358%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (more or less 860%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75680 (860%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the GeForce GT 230, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23760 (540%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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