GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (186%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should be much faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (194%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be much (more or less 300%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (300%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (482%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.