GeForce 8800 GS vs GeForce GTS 150

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 150, which has a clock speed of 740 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 36 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GS, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is much (more or less 79%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20960 (79%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 150 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5240 (79%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per 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 higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.