GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5770, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 63 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should be 35% quicker than the Radeon HD 5770 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
	Difference: 26880 (35%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is a small bit (approximately 15%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5770. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5168 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be just a bit (approximately 8%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5770, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1088 (8%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels 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 number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.