GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which features GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 800 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1280 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be much (about 104%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19968 (104%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be a lot (about 53%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5088 (53%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.