GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which comes with GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390 8G, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 280320 (270%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is a lot (about 308%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 120832 (308%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 49312 (336%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate also depends on lots of 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.