GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 590, which has a clock speed of 1469 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 12 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 590 is 153% quicker than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 158464 (153%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be quite a bit (more or less 440%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 172368 (440%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be much (approximately 220%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32320 (220%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one 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 memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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