GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce 8800 Ultra

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, which has a core clock speed of 612 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1080 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and uses a 90 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should be a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17280 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is just a bit (about 6%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2368 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 888 (6%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 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 the video card can 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 Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.