GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 182400 (317%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 will be much (approximately 167%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (167%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.