GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 650 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 16448 (26%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 is a lot (more or less 35%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8856 (35%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6928 (69%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.