GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be much (about 93%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (approximately 23%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.