GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (127%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (about 49%) better at AF than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23168 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13792 (117%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.