GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 975 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4890 2GB should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 21120 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB will be just a bit (approximately 2%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 832 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is just a bit (about 9%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1312 (9%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.