GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7850, which has a core clock frequency of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, 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 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be quite a bit (approximately 50%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18240 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be quite a bit (approximately 99%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 GTX, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13720 (99%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.