Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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 680		7650 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 4410 (136%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 will be 20% quicker than the Radeon HD 6950 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be quite a bit (more or less 83%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is superior to the Radeon HD 6950, by far. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.