GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with a core clock speed of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 4790 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1280 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is much (approximately 104%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19968 (104%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5088 (53%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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