GeForce RTX 3090 vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which features a core clock speed of 1925 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It is made up of 5120 SPUs, 320 Texture Address Units, and 128 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		335 Watts
GeForce RTX 3090		350 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce RTX 3090 should be 63% quicker than the Radeon RX 6950 XT overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		958668 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6950 XT		589824 MB/sec
	Difference: 368844 (63%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT should be much (approximately 35%) more effective at AF than the GeForce RTX 3090. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		616000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce RTX 3090		457560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 158440 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT will be a lot (more or less 58%) better at FSAA than the GeForce RTX 3090, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		246400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce RTX 3090		156240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 90160 (58%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.