GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 21376 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be just a bit (more or less 2%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 848 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is a lot (about 64%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12768 (64%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.