GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (182%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 GTX should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (440%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX will be quite a bit (more or less 92%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX will be much (about 188%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9000 (188%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.