GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a bit (approximately 9%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (approximately 33%) better at AA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (33%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.