GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 993 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be quite a bit (about 36%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13136 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 24%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.