GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which has core speeds of 860 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 49920 (48%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is much (approximately 41%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15872 (41%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be a lot (more or less 87%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12832 (87%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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