GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 165 Watts (83%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 168320 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be a little bit (approximately 10%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7296 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32672 (128%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.