GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		40 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 210 Watts (525%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be much faster than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 169600 (2650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (approximately 4593%) better at AF than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		1800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82680 (4593%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (about 3029%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM), and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27260 (3029%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.