GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (75%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 112640 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (about 243%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59856 (243%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (approximately 174%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17900 (174%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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