GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which features GPU clock speed of 924 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 96 Watts (128%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 7680 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is a lot (approximately 89%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34752 (89%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29664 (202%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.