GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (85%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be 184% faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 113920 (184%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (more or less 103%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92). (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42880 (103%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 171%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92), and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17760 (171%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.