GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970M should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 32448 (51%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be a lot (more or less 196%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48920 (196%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34352 (344%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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