GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 950

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 950, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1024 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1652 MHz on this specific card. It features 768 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 950 should be 2% quicker than the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 2048 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is quite a bit (more or less 25%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9984 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18080 (123%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out 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 graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.