GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce 8800 Ultra

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, which uses a 90 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 612 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 1080 MHz on this card. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

F.E.A.R. 2

Settings:	Maximum Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Unknown (Source)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		46 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTX		42 FPS
	Difference: 4 FPS (10%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		45 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTX		21 FPS
	Difference: 24 FPS (114%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		67 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTX		54 FPS
	Difference: 13 FPS (24%)

Far Cry 2

Settings:	Very High Qualty
AA:	none
AF:	none
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Intel Core i7-920,3 x 2 GB Ram,Windows Vista Ultimate 32 Bit SP1 (Source)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		45 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTX		40 FPS
	Difference: 5 FPS (13%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		49 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTX		43 FPS
	Difference: 6 FPS (14%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		59 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTX		53 FPS
	Difference: 6 FPS (11%)

Tom Clancy's Endwar

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		20 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTX		17 FPS
	Difference: 3 FPS (18%)

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

GeForce 8800 GTX		40 FPS
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39 FPS
	Difference: 1 FPS (3%)

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GeForce 8800 Ultra wins

(Based entirely on the benchmarks listed above)

When combining all game benchmark scores on this page together, the GeForce 8800 Ultra wins overall, by 84 FPS. Please note that we do not have the results of every benchmark ever done for these cards, so the results may differ wildly in different games.

GeForce 8800 Ultra		415 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTX		331 FPS
	Difference: 84 FPS (25%)

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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 perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be a small bit (approximately 6%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be a little bit (about 6%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 GTX, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (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 transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.