GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has a clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (76%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is quite a bit (about 164%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55200 (164%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.