GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 1343 (71%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 61504 (62%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (approximately 144%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (19%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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