GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of 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)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 275 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 32992 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (approximately 39%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19760 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (approximately 44%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 275, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7876 (44%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.