GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has GPU clock 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 TAUs, 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 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 165 Watts (83%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 168320 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be a small bit (about 10%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7296 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32672 (128%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 in a second.

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