GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is a lot (more or less 49%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a lot (more or less 108%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (108%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.