GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 23424 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be much (approximately 28%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10832 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5312 (36%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.