GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is 20% quicker than the Radeon HD 6950 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32384 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (more or less 42%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20992 (42%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (more or less 45%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6950, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11456 (45%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the 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 better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 get to the maximum fill rate.