GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 157 Watts (365%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is 533% faster than the GeForce GT 320 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 134720 (533%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (more or less 443%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57440 (443%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21280 (493%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.