GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 580, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1002 MHz on this card. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 73 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 will be 86% quicker than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 88704 (86%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be quite a bit (about 26%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be quite a bit (about 152%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22368 (152%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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 output 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 max fill rate.