ATI Radeon X800 XL vs Sapphire Hybrid X800 XL 512MB

Pixel fillrate number determines how many pixels a GPU can draw on screen and off screen. Higher numbers allow graphics units to support higher display resolutions and frame rates. There are two characteristics that affect the maximum pixel fillrate. These are graphics clock and the number of Raster Operations Pipelines (ROPs). Since both characteristics are equal between cards, their pixel fillrate is also identical.

There are two factors that influence the maximum theoretical texture fillrate. They are graphics frequency and the number of TMUs (Texture Mapping Units). Both models have the same number of TMUs and the same graphics clock rate, as a result their texture fillrate is equal.

To speed up processing, the GPUs store 3D scene data, textures and intermediate data, used for image generation, in on-board memory. The video memory usually has much higher bandwidth than system RAM, and more bandwidth allows the graphics card to run at higher screen resolutions, use larger and more detailed textures, and apply more complex 3D effects and filters. The bandwidth is dependent on several components, such as memory type, speed, and width of memory interface. In this case, the Hybrid X800 XL 512MB offers higher clocked memory. Consequently, it has slightly higher memory bandwidth.