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GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The GeForce 8800 Ultra has a clock speed of 612 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1080 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 90 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which features a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850 151 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra 171 Watts
Difference: 20 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850 128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra 103680 MB/sec
Difference: 24320 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a lot (more or less 33%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850 52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra 39168 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 13032 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be much (more or less 58%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850 23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra 14688 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 8512 (58%)

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

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GeForce 8800 Ultra

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8800 Ultra Radeon HD 5850
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year May 2007 September 30, 2009
Code Name G80 Cypress PRO
Memory 768 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 612 MHz 725 MHz
Memory Speed 2160 MHz 4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 171 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 103680 MB/sec 128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 39168 Mtexels/sec 52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 14688 Mpixels/sec 23200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units 64 72
Render Output Units 24 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 90 nm 40 nm
Transistors 681 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8800 Ultra

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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