GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 980, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1126 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (289%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (approximately 329%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 110528 (329%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 62464 (651%)

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 moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.