GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4730, which has clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should in theory be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4730 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4480 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) is much (about 86%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (86%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) will be a lot (more or less 86%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4730, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (86%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.