GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should theoretically be a small bit superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 192 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB is just a bit (more or less 2%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 376 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 260 (3%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.