GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has a core clock frequency 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 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 965M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a small bit (approximately 17%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 965M. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9984 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M will be a little bit (about 18%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4608 (18%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 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.