GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which features GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also 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)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is quite a bit (more or less 55%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18600 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a lot (more or less 142%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (142%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.