GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB features a core clock frequency of 513 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 792 MHz. It also features a 320-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 90 nm design. It is comprised of 96 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 20 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 860M, which comes with a clock frequency of 797 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1152 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.