GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 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 1060 3GB		12185 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 8945 (276%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36608 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is much (more or less 54%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38032 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be much (more or less 182%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6950, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46688 (182%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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 maximum fill rate.