GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which has clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB will be 11% faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 11520 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be a little bit (approximately 4%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1368 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 47%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (47%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.