GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, which features GPU clock speed of 576 MHz, and 896 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 999 MHz through a 448-bit bus. It also is made up of 216 SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm should in theory be a small bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 8208 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm should be a small bit (approximately 6%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2304 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm should be a small bit (more or less 10%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1440 (10%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This figure is worked out 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.