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GeForce GT 210 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

The GeForce GT 210 has a core clock speed of 589 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also features a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 16 SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a clock speed 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.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 210		31 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (706%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 will be 1275% faster than the GeForce GT 210 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 210		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (about 1693%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 210. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 210		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79768 (1693%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (more or less 1095%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 210, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 210		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25804 (1095%)

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

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GeForce GT 210

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Radeon HD 6970

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GT 210	Radeon HD 6970
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	October 2009	December 2010
Code Name	GT218	Cayman XT
Memory	512 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	589 MHz	880 MHz
Memory Speed	1600 MHz	5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	31 watts	250 watts
Bandwidth	12800 MB/sec	176000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	4712 Mtexels/sec	84480 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	2356 Mpixels/sec	28160 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	16	1536
Texture Mapping Units	8	96
Render Output Units	4	32
Bus Type	DDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	64-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	40 nm	40 nm
Transistors	260 million	2640 million
Bus	PCIe 2.0	PCIe x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10.1	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.2	OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

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