GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 295

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 295, which comes with core clock speeds of 576 MHz on the GPU, and 999 MHz on the 896 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 240 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 28 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 118 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 295 should be much faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 120096 (116%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is a lot (approximately 135%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52992 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be quite a bit (about 120%) better at AA than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17568 (120%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.