GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this model. It features 1664 SPUs as well as 104 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 should be 116% faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 120320 (116%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be much (more or less 179%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70032 (179%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 52512 (358%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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