GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (85%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 201920 (325%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a lot (approximately 185%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92). (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 76800 (185%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (185%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.