Pixel-pushing power
We'll take a brief stop up front to look at these cards' basic ability to draw pixels (and textured pixels) on the screen. Below are some of the theoretical peak numbers for the various cards we're testing today, plus a few other common cards in the same categories.
| Core clock (MHz) | Pixels/ clock | Peak fill rate (Mpixels/s) | Textures/ clock | Peak fill rate (Mtexels/s) | Memory clock (MHz) | Memory bus width (bits) | Peak memory bandwidth (GB/s) | |
| Radeon X1600 XT | 590 | 4 | 2360 | 4 | 2360 | 1380 | 128 | 22.1 |
| GeForce 6800 | 325 | 8 | 2600 | 12 | 3900 | 700 | 256 | 22.4 |
| GeForce 6600 GT | 500 | 4 | 2000 | 8 | 4000 | 1000 | 128 | 16.0 |
| Radeon X800 | 400 | 12 | 4800 | 12 | 4800 | 700 | 256 | 22.4 |
| GeForce 6800 GS | 425 | 8 | 3400 | 12 | 5100 | 1000 | 256 | 32.0 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 350 | 16 | 5600 | 16 | 5600 | 1000 | 256 | 32.0 |
| Radeon X800 XL | 400 | 16 | 6400 | 16 | 6400 | 980 | 256 | 31.4 |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra | 425 | 16 | 6800 | 16 | 6800 | 1100 | 256 | 35.2 |
| GeForce 7800 GT | 400 | 16 | 6400 | 20 | 8000 | 1000 | 256 | 32.0 |
| Radeon X1800 XL | 500 | 16 | 8000 | 16 | 8000 | 1000 | 256 | 32.0 |
| Radeon X850 XT | 520 | 16 | 8320 | 16 | 8320 | 1120 | 256 | 35.8 |
| Radeon X850 XT PE | 540 | 16 | 8640 | 16 | 8640 | 1180 | 256 | 37.8 |
| XFX GeForce 7800 GT | 450 | 16 | 7200 | 20 | 9000 | 1050 | 256 | 33.6 |
| Radeon X1800 XT | 625 | 16 | 10000 | 16 | 10000 | 1500 | 256 | 48.0 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX | 430 | 16 | 6880 | 24 | 10320 | 1200 | 256 | 38.4 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 512 | 550 | 16 | 8800 | 24 | 13200 | 1700 | 256 | 54.4 |
I've already said that this puppy's numbers are sick, but that table should put things into perspective. Note that the 7800 GTX 512 has nearly twice the peak multitextured fill rate of the GeForce 6800 Ultra, last year's top NVIDIA card. Let's see how well the GTX 512 delivers on its paper potential in 3DMark's fill rate tests.
