GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a GPU core 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 made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 275 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 48992 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (approximately 67%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33840 (67%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 275, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10436 (59%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.