GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 870M, which has GPU core speed of 941 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 1344 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 Ultra will be 8% quicker than the GeForce GTX 870M in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 7680 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be quite a bit (more or less 169%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66224 (169%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is much (more or less 54%) better at AA than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7896 (54%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated 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 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip 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 ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.