GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should in theory be a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be quite a bit (about 44%) better at texture filtering 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 quite a bit (approximately 80%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.