GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which features core clock 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) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 192 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB will be a little bit (about 2%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 376 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB is the winner, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.