GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 575 MHz. The GDDR4 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should be 10% faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB is a lot (about 34%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6224 (34%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB will be a bit (more or less 12%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.