GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM works at a frequency of 993 MHz on this 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)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 960M should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be much (about 75%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18840 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M is a lot (more or less 75%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7536 (75%)

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

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.