GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with core clock 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 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (about 110%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.