GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also 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 GT 1030		30 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (567%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GT 1030 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 110848 (226%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot (about 74%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 1030. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29920 (74%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (about 26%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 1030, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5360 (26%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.