GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 40128 (63%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be much (approximately 57%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14168 (57%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be a lot (about 47%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4688 (47%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated 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 video 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.