GeForce RTX 4090 vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which has GPU clock speed of 1925 MHz, and 16384 MB of GDDR6 RAM set to run at 2250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 5120 Stream Processors, 320 Texture Address Units, and 128 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		335 Watts
GeForce RTX 4090		450 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce RTX 4090 is 77% faster than the Radeon RX 6950 XT in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4090		1042432 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6950 XT		589824 MB/sec
	Difference: 452608 (77%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 4090 is much (more or less 86%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 6950 XT. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4090		1144320 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 6950 XT		616000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 528320 (86%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 4090 will be a lot (about 60%) better at AA than the Radeon RX 6950 XT, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4090		393360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 6950 XT		246400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 146960 (60%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.