GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 560 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64576 (102%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be much (about 81%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20360 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is much (more or less 159%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 get to the maximum fill rate.