GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 993 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (75%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 63744 (101%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be quite a bit (more or less 103%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25376 (103%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9740 (95%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.