GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which features a clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 225600 (588%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (approximately 348%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92000 (348%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23000 (348%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.