Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 memory runs at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 680 is 203% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 128704 (203%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be much (more or less 415%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103768 (415%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 drawing the pixels (image) on 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 maximum fill rate.