GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should in theory be a small bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB will be quite a bit (about 34%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB is a bit (more or less 4%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.