Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 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 512MB		110 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 is 203% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 128704 (203%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is a lot (about 415%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103768 (415%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be much (about 222%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22192 (222%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.