GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 GTX 460		2557 points
	Difference: 683 (27%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 will be 85% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (85%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a lot (about 86%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32600 (86%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9400 (58%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is 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 higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.