GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be just a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB should be quite a bit (more or less 34%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8600 (34%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB is just a bit (approximately 4%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends 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.