GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 5750 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB features core speeds of 513 MHz on the GPU, and 792 MHz on the 640 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 20 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5750 512MB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1150 MHz on this specific card. It features 720(144x5) SPUs as well as 36 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.