GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 is 23% quicker than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 24320 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is much (more or less 33%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13032 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8512 (58%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.