GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce 8800 Ultra

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, which comes with a core clock frequency of 612 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1080 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 90 nm design. It features 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should be 20% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTX overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17280 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is a little bit (more or less 6%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2368 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 888 (6%)

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 moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the 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 higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high 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 number of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.