Radeon HD 6930 vs GeForce GTX 280

Place in the ranking	732	536
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.11	2.01
Power efficiency	1.00	2.72
Architecture	Tesla 2.0 (2007−2013)	TeraScale 3 (2010−2013)
GPU code name	GT200	Cayman
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Release date	16 June 2008 (16 years ago)	1 December 2011 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$649	$180

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

HD 6930 has 1727% better value for money than GTX 280.

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	240	1280
Core clock speed	602 MHz	750 MHz
Number of transistors	1,400 million	2,640 million
Manufacturing process technology	65 nm	40 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	236 Watt	186 Watt
Maximum GPU temperature	105 °C	no data
Texture fill rate	48.16	60.00
Floating-point processing power	0.6221 TFLOPS	1.92 TFLOPS
ROPs	32	32
TMUs	80	80

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interface	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x16
Length	267 mm	220 mm
Height	4.376" (111 mm) (11.1 cm)	no data
Width	2-slot	2-slot
Supplementary power connectors	1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin	2x 6-pin
SLI options	+	-

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount	1 GB	1 GB
Memory bus width	512 Bit	256 Bit
Memory clock speed	1107 MHz	1200 MHz
Memory bandwidth	141.7 GB/s	153.6 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	HDTVDual Link DVI	2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Multi monitor support	+	no data
HDMI	-	+
Maximum VGA resolution	2048x1536	no data
Audio input for HDMI	S/PDIF	no data

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	11.1 (10_0)	11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model	4.0	5.0
OpenGL	2.1	4.4
OpenCL	1.1	1.2
Vulkan	N/A	N/A
CUDA	+	-

Gaming performance

Let's see how good the compared graphics cards are for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in FPS.

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	3.37	7.27
Recency	16 June 2008	1 December 2011
Chip lithography	65 nm	40 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	236 Watt	186 Watt

HD 6930 has a 115.7% higher aggregate performance score, an age advantage of 3 years, a 62.5% more advanced lithography process, and 26.9% lower power consumption.

The Radeon HD 6930 is our recommended choice as it beats the GeForce GTX 280 in performance tests.

Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.