GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a core clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (450%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (approximately 78%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37120 (78%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (more or less 138%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTS 150, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16320 (138%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write 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 speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.