GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR4 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.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should theoretically be a small bit superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 192 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB should be a little bit (more or less 2%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 376 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 260 (3%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels 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 core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.