GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 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 960		7627 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 4387 (135%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (43%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be a bit (about 2%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1728 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10464 (41%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 per second.

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