GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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 GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 will be 39% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (more or less 86%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32600 (86%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a small bit (more or less 19%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (19%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.