GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has 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 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 560 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is quite a bit (more or less 81%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.