GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which features core clock speeds of 575 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB will be much (approximately 34%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6224 (34%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should be a small bit (approximately 12%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1060 (12%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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