GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be a small bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 1472 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should be quite a bit (more or less 66%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16600 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) will be a little bit (about 4%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.