GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is much (about 42%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29248 (42%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (approximately 160%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40832 (160%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.