GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, 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 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 91520 (147%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (approximately 92%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92). (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38400 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (208%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed 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 ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.