GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB comes with a core clock frequency of 513 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 792 MHz. It also features a 320-bit memory bus, and uses a 90 nm design. It features 96 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 20 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. ATi has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB	Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	Nov 2006 (640)	Nov 7, 2008
Code Name	G80	R700
Fab Process	90 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
Memory	640 MB	1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed	513 MHz	625 MHz (x2)
Shader Speed	1188 MHz	(N/A) MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	792 MHz	993 MHz (x2)
Unified Shaders	96	800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	48	40 (x2)
Render Output Units	20	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	320-bit	256-bit (x2)
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	143 watts	250 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	63360 MB/sec	127104 MB/sec
Texel Rate	24624 Mtexels/sec	50000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10260 Mpixels/sec	20000 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.