GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which makes use of 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 model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (175%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 31552 (99%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be much (more or less 40%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10040 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its 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 core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.