GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 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 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7850 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 90240 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a lot (approximately 124%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30416 (124%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution 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 (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17260 (168%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.