GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 9800 GTX+ in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (127%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (more or less 49%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX+. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23168 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13792 (117%)

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 past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.