GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units 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 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 1024 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (more or less 36%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18560 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (about 23%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4864 (23%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 reach the max fill rate.