GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 72 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 260 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 48336 (76%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be quite a bit (about 47%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11864 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be a lot (more or less 61%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6128 (61%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported 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. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one 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 video card will be at handling 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 the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.