GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 880M should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M will be a lot (more or less 388%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 97112 (388%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20528 (205%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.