GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 260

Intro

The GeForce 8800 Ultra uses a 90 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 612 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 1080 MHz on this specific model. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 260, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 999 MHz on this particular model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 8800 Ultra Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce GTX 260 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 8800 Ultra	GeForce GTX 260
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	May 2007	June 16, 2008
Code Name	G80	G200
Fab Process	90 nm	65 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe x16 2.0
Memory	768 MB	896 MB
Core Speed	612 MHz	576 MHz
Shader Speed	1500 MHz	1242 MHz
Memory Speed	1080 MHz	999 MHz
Unified Shaders	128	192
Texture Mapping Units	64	64
Render Output Units	24	28
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	384-bit	448-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.1
Power (Max TDP)	171 watts	182 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.0
Bandwidth	103680 MB/sec	111888 MB/sec
Texel Rate	39168 Mtexels/sec	36864 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	14688 Mpixels/sec	16128 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.