Texture Mapping Unit - Texture Fill Rate

Texture Fill Rate

The main article for this category is Fillrate.

Texture Fill Rate = (# of TMUs) x (Core Clock) The number of textured pixels the card can render to the screen every second. To render a 3D scene, textures are mapped over the top of polygon meshes. This is called texture mapping and is accomplished by texture mapping units (TMUs) on the videocard. Texture fill rate is a measure of the speed with which a particular card can perform texture mapping.

Though pixel shader processing is becoming more important, this number still holds some weight. Best example of this is the X1600 XT. This card has a 3 to 1 ratio of pixel shader processors/texture mapping units. And the X1600 XT gets creamed by the 7600 GT because of it. In the mid range, texture mapping can still very much be a bottleneck. However, at the high end, the X1900 XTX has this same 3 to 1 ratio, but does just fine because screen resolutions top out and it has more than enough texture mapping power to handle any display.

Read more about this topic:  Texture Mapping Unit

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