GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 993 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 950 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 42176 (66%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is much (about 97%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24152 (97%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be a lot (approximately 228%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22768 (228%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.