GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 11520 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be quite a bit (about 31%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9168 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2688 (22%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.