GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 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 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB should theoretically perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 21120 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is a little bit (more or less 2%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 832 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4890 2GB is superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1312 (9%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.