GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 993 MHz on this card. 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 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be quite a bit (about 49%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be much (about 108%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (108%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.