GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has 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 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be 14% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 15216 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be much (about 21%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8528 (21%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be much (about 24%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.