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GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ has a GPU core clock speed of 738 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory runs at 1100 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which features a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX+ 145 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 200 Watts
Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX+ overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+ 70400 MB/sec
Difference: 89600 (127%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (more or less 49%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX+. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+ 47232 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 23168 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+ 11808 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 13792 (117%)

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

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GeForce 9800 GTX+

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9800 GTX+ Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year July 2008 December 2010
Code Name G92b Cayman Pro
Memory 512 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 738 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 2200 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 145 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 70400 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 47232 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 11808 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 1408
Texture Mapping Units 64 88
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 754 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9800 GTX+

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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