Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 690, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224512 (140%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is a lot (approximately 233%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 163840 (233%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be much (more or less 129%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32960 (129%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 applied in a second.

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