GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 980 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 160448 (252%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (about 477%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 119128 (477%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (approximately 621%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 62064 (621%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.