GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM runs at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (175%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 31552 (99%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be quite a bit (about 40%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10040 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4016 (40%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could 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 the core 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.