GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 memory runs at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 179 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 295 will be 252% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 160224 (252%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be much (approximately 269%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67160 (269%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22256 (223%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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