GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 30720 (30%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (approximately 29%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11232 (29%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14112 (96%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.