GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 575 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 1GB is a lot (approximately 83%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.