GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB should be 0% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 192 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be a small bit (about 2%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 376 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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.