GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be 257% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (257%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot (approximately 110%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (167%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.