GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with core speeds of 860 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7850 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 91520 (147%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be much (approximately 32%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92). (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13440 (32%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17120 (165%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.