GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32384 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (more or less 42%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20992 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.