GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses 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 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (75%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 112640 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (more or less 243%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59856 (243%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (more or less 174%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17900 (174%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.