GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470 should in theory perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 6816 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is much (approximately 47%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16008 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is quite a bit (about 21%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4280 (21%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 maximum fill rate.