GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 15216 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be quite a bit (about 21%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8528 (21%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be quite a bit (about 24%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3872 (24%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in a second.

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