GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 560 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64576 (102%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is a lot (more or less 81%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20360 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be a lot (more or less 159%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15920 (159%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.