GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 features a core clock frequency of 576 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 999 MHz. It also features a 448-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It is comprised of 216 SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 28 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. ATi has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 993 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 260 Core 216	Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	September 16, 2008	Nov 7, 2008
Code Name	G200	R700
Fab Process	65 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
Memory	896 MB	512 MB (x2)
Core Speed	576 MHz	625 MHz (x2)
Shader Speed	1242 MHz	(N/A) MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	999 MHz	993 MHz (x2)
Unified Shaders	216	800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	72	40 (x2)
Render Output Units	28	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	448-bit	256-bit (x2)
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	202 watts	250 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	111888 MB/sec	127104 MB/sec
Texel Rate	41472 Mtexels/sec	50000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	16128 Mpixels/sec	20000 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.