GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. 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 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 192 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB should be a small bit (approximately 2%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 376 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.