GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with core 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580, in theory, should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32384 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (about 42%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20992 (42%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be a lot (about 45%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11456 (45%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.