GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 993 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (85%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 65024 (105%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be just a bit (about 20%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92). (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 92%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92), and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (92%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.