GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6970 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 64112 (57%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (approximately 104%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43008 (104%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (more or less 75%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.