GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which features core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is 0% faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 192 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB is a little bit (more or less 2%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 376 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should be a small bit (more or less 3%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 260 (3%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.