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

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. ATi has clocked the core speed at 575 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

F.E.A.R. 2

Settings:	Maximum Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Unknown (Source)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		50 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		30 FPS
	Difference: 20 FPS (67%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		36 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		14 FPS
	Difference: 22 FPS (157%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		49 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		38 FPS
	Difference: 11 FPS (29%)

Far Cry 2

Settings:	Very High Qualty
AA:	none
AF:	none
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Intel Core i7-920,3 x 2 GB Ram,Windows Vista Ultimate 32 Bit SP1 (Source)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		42 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		31 FPS
	Difference: 11 FPS (35%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		48 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		32 FPS
	Difference: 16 FPS (50%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		51 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		38 FPS
	Difference: 13 FPS (34%)

Tom Clancy's Endwar

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		22 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		14 FPS
	Difference: 8 FPS (57%)

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		30 FPS
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		24 FPS
	Difference: 6 FPS (25%)

---

Radeon HD 4830 512MB wins

(Based entirely on the benchmarks listed above)

When combining all game benchmark scores on this page together, the Radeon HD 4830 512MB wins overall, by 106 FPS. Please note that we do not have the results of every benchmark ever done for these cards, so the results may differ wildly in different games.

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		371 FPS
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		265 FPS
	Difference: 106 FPS (40%)

---

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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should perform a little bit faster 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 a lot (approximately 34%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering 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 will be a little bit (about 12%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.