GeForce 8800 GS 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 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 should theoretically be quite a bit 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 is a lot (about 108%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is much (more or less 317%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GS, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.