GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (more or less 86%) better at AF 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 little bit (approximately 19%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.