GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 480		3650 points
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 410 (13%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should theoretically be a little bit superior to the Radeon HD 6950 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (approximately 68%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (about 31%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video 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 number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of 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.