GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 480, which has core speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 924 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 480 SPUs as well as 60 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 73728 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be a little bit (more or less 7%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2832 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a lot (more or less 129%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18912 (129%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.