GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4730, which has GPU core speed of 700 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640(128x5) Stream Processors, 32 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 1GB should be much (more or less 50%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 1GB should be quite a bit (about 71%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4730, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (71%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 in one second. This is calculated 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied 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 ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.