GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 470 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 26080 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is much (more or less 107%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36408 (107%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a little bit (more or less 5%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 470, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1320 (5%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated 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 processed in one second.

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