GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which has a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses 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.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 should in theory be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6950 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32384 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (more or less 42%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20992 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the Radeon HD 6950, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11456 (45%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 can be processed per second. This figure 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.