GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be a lot (more or less 49%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 108%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.