GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which features core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should be 2% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 1472 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should be much (more or less 66%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16600 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) is a small bit (about 4%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.