GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950, which features core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 102272 (177%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (about 181%) better at AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45344 (181%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (approximately 104%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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 transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.