GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTX 560 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 31872 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (more or less 55%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25040 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is just a bit (about 1%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 320 (1%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.