GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 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 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (about 207%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51800 (207%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (approximately 92%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9200 (92%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.