GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (more or less 1157%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64800 (1157%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is superior to the GeForce GT 420, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (814%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.