GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory running at 500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 142 Watts (258%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (700%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (more or less 300%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57600 (300%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (300%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR 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 is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.