GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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 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 is 85% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (more or less 86%) more effective at texture filtering 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 lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, and very much so. (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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.