GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM works at a frequency of 993 MHz on this particular model. 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 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is 101% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (more or less 207%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51800 (207%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.