GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 198 Watts (381%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 315 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 150720 (596%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (more or less 745%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 74480 (745%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (approximately 463%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 315, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23160 (463%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over 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 memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.