Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 4180 (120%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Geforce GTX 680 should theoretically be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 6970 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16256 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is a lot (more or less 52%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44288 (52%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4032 (14%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one 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 the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.