GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 56320 (54%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be much (more or less 80%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31232 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (approximately 74%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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