GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1408 SPUs, 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 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480 should theoretically be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 17408 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (about 68%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (31%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.