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GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

The GeForce 8800 Ultra features a GPU core clock speed of 612 MHz, and the 768 MB of GDDR3 memory runs at 1080 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 24 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra 171 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 200 Watts
Difference: 29 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra 103680 MB/sec
Difference: 56320 (54%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (more or less 80%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra 39168 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 31232 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (approximately 74%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra 14688 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 10912 (74%)

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 8800 Ultra

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 8800 Ultra Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year May 2007 December 2010
Code Name G80 Cayman Pro
Memory 768 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 612 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 2160 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 171 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 103680 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 39168 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 14688 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 1408
Texture Mapping Units 64 88
Render Output Units 24 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 90 nm 40 nm
Transistors 681 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8800 Ultra

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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