GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 90240 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (about 225%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55376 (225%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21740 (212%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 per second. This number is calculated 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.