From ExtremeTech's article:
"The GeForceFX weighs in at an imposing 4Gpixels/sec in the key pixel fill-rate area. It can't write that many pixels to memory though, because trying to move that many pixels around would outstrip memory bandwidth. But to give you an idea as to what it can move around, consider this example:
Let's start with an extreme case where 4X FSAA and trilinear filtering are enabled. Assume we're running with DXTC texture compression and getting a compression ratio of 4:1. We're assuming single-cycle processing for trilinear filtering and 4X FSAA for simplicity's sake. For the GeForceFX to just write 4Gpixels/sec into the frame buffer, here's what we calculate:
4 (number of Gpixels) * 4 (number of bytes per pixel using DXTC compression) * 8 (trilinear samples) * 4 (4X FSAA) = 488.3GB/sec.
Even dropping down to 32-bit color and using DXTC compression so we'd only have one byte per pixel, you'd still need 122.1GB/sec of bandwidth to write that many pixels into the frame buffer. Clearly impossible.
Now having shown you what GeForceFX can't do, let's show you what it can:
Let's assume a resolution of 1600x1200x128 at 60 fps with 4X FSAA and trilinear filtering enabled. Assume we're running with DXTC texture compression and getting a compression ratio of 4:1. for the GeForceFX to supply the needed pixels to meet this demand, here's what we calculate:
1600 * 1200 (resolution) * 4 (number of bytes per pixel using DXTC compression) * 8 (trilinear samples) * 4 (4X FSAA) * 60 (frame rate) = 5.1GB/sec.
Note: to get GB/sec we took the product of all these numbers and divide by 1024 three times. Without doing this you wind up with bytes/sec, and it's a huge number.
Going to 32-bit color with DXTC where you'd now have one byte per pixel, the memory bandwidth requirement drops to 1.3GB/sec. "
Heh...