Big question but easy answer probably...

[Eshelmen]

Ok why does the 9800 xt KILL the 5950 in benchmarks for waht i hear?

same with my 9800 pro ... in some games in www.tomshardware.com the 9800 pro is better than the 5950! WHY????

its like two hundred mhz slower and even slower memory bandwidth?


EDIT:

Sorry heres a link
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/vga-charts-04.html

 

[Doubl3KiLL]

Because raw physical speed isnt everything. Take AMD processors for instance, my CPU is running at 2.5 Ghz, but it would beat the snot out of a 2.5 Ghz P4. Radeons are just like that, they usually havew a lesser clock, but they do more work per clock cycle, its like a bike in a high gear, you have to pedal a bit harder, but you get more work done.

 

[Eshelmen]

ohh... so why doesnt nvidia do the same but with there speeds there at as well>?

 

[jimmyboy]

Yep, it's because the design of the Radeons seems to be a better, more streamlined design. At the risk of sounding like a fanATIc fanboy, the Radeons as they are now, compared to the Geforce cards, are simply better overall cards. The upcoming R4xx is apparently (more or less) an improvement on the existing R3xx design, so I'm guessing that unless Nvidia adopts a similar design, or comes up with something better, then they're still going to be struggling against ATI.