GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 660, which features GPU clock speed of 980 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1502 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 960 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 40512 (39%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a lot (about 100%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39232 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is much (about 60%) better at AA than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8832 (60%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.