GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a GPU core clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 275 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 48992 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (approximately 67%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33840 (67%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10436 (59%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, 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 processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.