GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 480, which features a clock frequency of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 924 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 480 SPUs, 60 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 91008 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a little bit (about 14%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be quite a bit (more or less 143%) better at AA than the GeForce 8800 GTX, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19800 (143%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.