GeForce 8800 GS 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 frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 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 GS		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (317%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (approximately 167%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (more or less 288%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 GS, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		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 across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.