GeForce 820M vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (1233%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be 900% faster than the GeForce 820M in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is much (about 512%) better at AF than the GeForce 820M. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58896 (512%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22724 (790%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.