GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (144%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 860M should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M is much (approximately 206%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51512 (206%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 860M is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.