GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should in theory be a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 11520 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be a lot (about 31%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9168 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2688 (22%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.