GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which has clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (75%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is 101% faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 63744 (101%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is a lot (approximately 103%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25376 (103%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be much (more or less 95%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9740 (95%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics 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 the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.