GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980M, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (about 299%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 74648 (299%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be much (more or less 564%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56432 (564%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.