GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 860M, which features GPU clock speed of 797 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1152 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 126 Watts (280%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 Ultra, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 39680 (62%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M is quite a bit (about 95%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37344 (95%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be a bit (more or less 15%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1936 (15%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.