GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB is 10% faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 1GB will be much (approximately 34%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8600 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 512MB is superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.