GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 295

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 295, which uses a 55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 999 MHz on this particular model. It features 240 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 118 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 295 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 120096 (116%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be much (more or less 135%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52992 (135%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17568 (120%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed in a second.

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