GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4730, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should in theory be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4730 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB is just a bit (about 10%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2224 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4730, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4660 (83%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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