GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (267%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB will be 29% faster than the GeForce GT 1030 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (29%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 will be a lot (about 62%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15480 (62%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (102%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.