GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 960, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 960 should be 150% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be much (about 115%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38528 (115%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26464 (276%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.