GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 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 in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (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%) faster with regards to AF 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

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.