Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 670 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 128448 (202%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 will be quite a bit (more or less 310%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 77480 (310%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 670 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19280 (193%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.