GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 993 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 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 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 960, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 48448 (76%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is much (approximately 189%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47128 (189%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is quite a bit (about 261%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26064 (261%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.