GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is 86% faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 53120 (86%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) is a lot (approximately 39%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (39%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (15%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.