GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be a bit faster 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 will be a lot (about 107%) faster with regards to 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

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a bit (about 5%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 470, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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 MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.