GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which features a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, 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 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 950 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 42176 (66%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is quite a bit (more or less 97%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24152 (97%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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