GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (317%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (approximately 167%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19000 (288%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.