GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has a core clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised 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 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (144%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 860M should be 1% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be a lot (about 206%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51512 (206%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 860M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2752 (28%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.