GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which has core clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (about 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 will be quite a bit (about 75%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the 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 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.