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

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4730, which has core speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall. (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 will be a small bit (about 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

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB will be much (approximately 83%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4730, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.