GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which has core clock speeds of 924 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970M should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is much (about 120%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40320 (120%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be quite a bit (about 362%) better at AA than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34752 (362%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.