GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB comes with a GPU clock speed of 772 MHz, and the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM runs at 1002 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 512 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 48 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which has a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 580 3GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 6950 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 580 3GB	Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	November 2010	December 2010
Code Name	GF110	Cayman Pro
Fab Process	40 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe x16
Memory	3072 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	772 MHz	800 MHz
Shader Speed	1544 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1002 MHz (4008 MHz effective)	1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders	512	1408
Texture Mapping Units	64	88
Render Output Units	48	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	384-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 4.1
Power (Max TDP)	244 watts	200 watts
Shader Model	5.0	5.0
Bandwidth	192384 MB/sec	160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	49408 Mtexels/sec	70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	37056 Mpixels/sec	25600 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated 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 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.