GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which has GPU core speed of 830 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 270 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 should be 456% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 262400 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (about 374%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 125760 (374%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43520 (453%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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