GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 36 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is 13% quicker than the GeForce GTX 280 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 18304 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a lot (about 46%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22240 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6336 (33%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per 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 colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.