GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 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 1GB		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 much better than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64576 (102%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be much (more or less 81%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20360 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is a lot (more or less 159%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.