Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit 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)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 680 should theoretically be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32256 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a lot (more or less 83%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58368 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is much (more or less 26%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6592 (26%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.