GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970M, which has core speeds of 924 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (107%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970M, in theory, should be a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be quite a bit (about 101%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37120 (101%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTX, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30552 (221%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.