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GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

The GeForce GTX 480 uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 924 MHz on this particular model. It features 480 SPUs as well as 60 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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

GeForce GTX 480 3650 points
Radeon HD 6950 3240 points
Difference: 410 (13%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 200 Watts
GeForce GTX 480 250 Watts
Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480 177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 160000 MB/sec
Difference: 17408 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (about 68%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480 42000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 28400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480 33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 25600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 8000 (31%)

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

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GeForce GTX 480

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 480 Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year March 2010 December 2010
Code Name GF100 Cayman Pro
Memory 1536 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 700 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 3696 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 177408 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 42000 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 33600 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 480 1408
Texture Mapping Units 60 88
Render Output Units 48 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 3000 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 480

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

One Response to “GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 6950”
gamer says:

HD 6950 = GTX 480 (fps). I'll take 6950 (less TDP).

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