GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 993 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 126 Watts (115%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 280 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 78144 (123%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is a lot (approximately 93%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23160 (93%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9264 (93%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.