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GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 960 makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific card. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should theoretically be a bit better than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15104 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be a lot (more or less 44%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22128 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is much (approximately 80%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16064 (80%)

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

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GeForce GTX 960

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Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model	GeForce GTX 960	Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	January 2015	Nov 7, 2008
Code Name	GM206	R700
Memory	2048 MB	1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed	1127 MHz	625 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	7000 MHz	1986 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP)	120 watts	250 watts
Bandwidth	112000 MB/sec	127104 MB/sec
Texel Rate	72128 Mtexels/sec	50000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	36064 Mpixels/sec	20000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	1024	800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	64	40 (x2)
Render Output Units	32	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR3
Bus Width	128-bit	256-bit (x2)
Fab Process	28 nm	55 nm
Transistors	2940 million	956 million
Bus	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
DirectX Version	DirectX 12.0	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.5	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

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