GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be a bit better than the GeForce GTX 470 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 26080 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a lot (about 107%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36408 (107%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 470, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1320 (5%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.