Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 680 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 128704 (203%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a lot (about 415%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103768 (415%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is quite a bit (more or less 222%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 largest amount of data (in units of MB 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 it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.