GeForce 8800 GT 1GB 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 memory works at a speed of 993 MHz on this particular card. 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 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be a lot (approximately 49%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a lot (more or less 108%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (108%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.