GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 72320 (70%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (about 116%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45312 (116%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (about 92%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13472 (92%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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