GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 is 243% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (243%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (about 138%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46400 (138%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (about 233%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (233%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could 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 card's 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.