GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 1343 (71%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 will be 62% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 61504 (62%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (approximately 144%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a bit (about 19%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.