GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 993 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be 0% quicker than the GeForce GTX 275 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 96 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 275 will be a little bit (about 1%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 640 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2276 (13%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.