GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be 0% faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 192 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB should be a little bit (approximately 2%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 376 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.