GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (85%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (more or less 91%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33600 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a lot (approximately 86%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 GTX, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11800 (86%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.