GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 6848 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ is much (approximately 89%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22232 (89%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ is a small bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1808 (18%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.