GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which features core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 56704 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be just a bit (about 16%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9200 (85%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.