GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 470, which comes with GPU clock speed of 607 MHz, and 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 837 MHz through a 320-bit bus. It also is made up of 448 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 40 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 47520 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX will be just a bit (more or less 8%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2808 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTX, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10480 (76%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 per second. This 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 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.