GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which has clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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 GS		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GS overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (approximately 348%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (more or less 348%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GS, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.