GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB features a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory is set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 112 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 590, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 607 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 855 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 512 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest 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 its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.