GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 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)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 470 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 70368 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be a lot (approximately 36%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8992 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be quite a bit (more or less 143%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14280 (143%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.