GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which features core speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 64112 (57%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (more or less 104%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43008 (104%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (about 75%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12032 (75%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.