GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 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 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be 99% quicker than the GeForce GTX 960M in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 63104 (99%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be a small bit (approximately 14%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6160 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a bit (more or less 14%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 960M, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2464 (14%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.