GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon HD 4670 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GS makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 12 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.