GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
GeForce GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 1787 (123%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 102272 (177%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a lot (about 181%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45344 (181%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13072 (104%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.