GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 8800 GS overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be quite a bit (more or less 108%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28640 (108%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20920 (317%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 can be processed per second. This 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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