GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 450, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 902 MHz on this specific model. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 45952 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be quite a bit (approximately 56%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14112 (56%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2160 (17%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are 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 higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 fill 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 get to the maximum fill rate.