GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 3440 (106%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

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

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be a small bit (about 10%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be much (approximately 128%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.