GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be 47% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (47%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be much (more or less 93%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34000 (93%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (23%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.