GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 470, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 607 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 837 MHz on this specific model. It features 448 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 470 will be 29% faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 30240 (29%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is a little bit (more or less 15%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5176 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9592 (65%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.