Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 690 will be 203% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 257408 (203%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is much (more or less 368%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 184240 (368%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be a lot (approximately 193%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 38560 (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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a 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 should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 amount 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 ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.