GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4730, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB is 10% faster than the Radeon HD 4730 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should be just a bit (more or less 10%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2224 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4730, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4660 (83%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.